


Sparks and Steel

by 3wisellamas



Category: OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes
Genre: Angst, Crack Pairing, Crack Treated Seriously, Domestic Fluff, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Family Fluff, Finale Expansion, Fluff, Giving Sparko a proper epilogue because he deserves one, Hero/Villain Drama, It does come close a couple of times though, M/M, Moving In Together, No Smut, Petty Villainy, Petty...Heroism?, Post-Finale, Pranks, Spoilers, Tagging violence to be safe because SV's a jerk, Tons of headcanons, Trauma, absolutely none
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:42:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 58,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25054858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3wisellamas/pseuds/3wisellamas
Summary: Two Gar's new hires, one a hero-in-training trying to find a new path after his school turned out to be a bust, the other an evil robot forced to live and work with his enemies after losingeverything,find surprising comfort in each other, and eventually a LOT more.A crack pairing I took way, WAY too seriously.  First half takes place between Dendy's Video Channel and Let's Fight to the End, second half is post-finale.
Relationships: Sparko/Darrell
Comments: 23
Kudos: 22





	1. New Hires

Page 18 of the Gar's Bodega employee handbook states that, should any evil robot with clear intent to destroy the store make their way inside, they are to be taken out as soon as possible by any of the hero employees present. No one is really sure why this rule needed to be so specific, but in this case it certainly applied.

The robot had crashed through the window courtesy of a poorly-aimed throw from Radicles, and flew across the store until he collided with the opposite wall, cracking the concrete behind him. He didn't stay down for long, though, grunting more in anger than pain as he got right back onto his feet, his arm cannon out and his eye quickly locking onto the first blue crop top he saw, which happened to be floating a few feet in the air above him. 

"There's  _ more _ of you Lakewood Lowlifes now?" Darrell scoffed, a high-pitched whine coming from his cannon as he charged it up, pointing it right at Sparko, but before he could even fire it a bolt of electricity shot towards his head, forcing him to dodge behind a shelf. Processing his current situation, his system status, and what little he could extrapolate about this new hero's capabilities from that single attack, he put together a strategy to destroy him, grinning evilly as he moved into position -- despite a loss record long enough to stretch all the way to Neo Riot City and back he was a cold, calculating battle machine, in theory.

In practice, he just jumped back out of hiding, with a loud, nasally laugh that was all but guaranteed to ruin whatever element of surprise he'd gained, and charged forward, arm cannon blazing.

Sparko, meanwhile, had absolutely no clue what he was even doing. He had only just finished rereading his employee handbook for the third time, and though fighting these robots was indeed a part of his new job duties, it was still almost exclusively his coworkers' thing, not his. In fact, fighting villains in general was quite new to the teen -- despite his relatively high power level POINT Prep tended to lack quite a bit in the actual combat experience department. Still, he zipped around in midair dodging plasma blasts, wracking his brain to find a way to finish the battle as quick as possible, as despite his inexperience he was still a trained hero, in theory.

In practice, as Darrell closed the gap between them he panicked, and electricity crackled along his extended arm, shooting bolts of lightning that the robot had almost no chance to dodge even with Sparko's poor aim. Darrell's systems overloaded immediately, his power cell's explosion sending metallic scrap flying all over the store.

Even if it wasn't the cleanest victory, with the fight concluded Sparko finally let himself breathe again, collapsing face-first back onto the checkout counter that had very recently become his new post. 

"Hey, watch it, I gotta take a nap there later." Enid hopped through the broken window and inspected the scene, before lobbing the robot's head like a basketball into a nearby trash can, smirking at the satisfying sound of broken glass. "Not bad for your first Boxbot fight, though! Unofficial one, but whatever." She laughed, as behind her KO and Rad started making a game of seeing how much of Darrell's body they could toss into the can as well from an ever-increasing distance. Needless to say, the alien was winning, though even without telekinetic powers KO was giving him some healthy competition.

As his youngest coworker rushed for a disembodied boot on the floor right underneath Sparko's tail-like electric half, he frowned, floating out of the way. "So, hang on, I thought you guys exploded the red one yesterday?"

"Yeah, but he comes back," KO answered him as he swished the boot right into the can, tying up their game. "They all do!"

"How many of him  _ are _ there?"

"That's...a good question." Another box suddenly crashed down, and the Boxmore alarm blared to life yet again. "I'll ask him for you!"

He led his friends back outside for a new battle, with Darrell already waiting for them, gleefully kicking open the side panels of his box. 

"Hey Darrell, how many of you are there?"

"Two thousand, three-hundred and twenty-eight," Darrell answered almost immediately. "Mostly at the factory. But Daddy's cleaning out some old inventory today, so there's gonna be a lot more me!"

Right on cue dozens more boxes dropped, with Darrell copies bursting out, each wielding a different weapon -- an upgraded laser cannon, a flamethrower, a missile launcher, a cheap foam costume sword, etc -- and one final, giant Darrell in the big box at the very back of the parking lot, giving an equally-oversized laugh as he took aim at the plaza.

Enid could only give a flat, monotone "Seriously?" as she just kicked a few fireballs towards the closest robot, while Rad and KO teamed up to distract and take out the big one in the back. Sparko kept a close watch through the broken window as his friends battled the evil robots, until each and every one had been scattered across the pavement, and the three trudged back into the bodega, clearly exhausted.

"I really hope that's it for a while," KO mused. He reached for his broom, but before he could make it back outside to begin cleaning a shout echoed through the store. 

"BODEGAMEN!!"

"Mr Gar!" All four heroes, Sparko included, punctuated this with a terrified salute.

"An important mission's come up!" Glancing to Sparko, who shrunk back as he was clearly not meant to be addressed for such matters, he cleared his throat. "Top secret, Dendy'll fill you in upstairs. Do  _ not _ disappoint me."

"Yes Sir!" Their boss made his needlessly-dramatic exit, launching himself through one of the ceiling tiles, then carefully replacing it behind him. Once he was out of view the distinctive roar of a flying, flaming sports car engine could be heard trailing off somewhere in the distance.

"Welp, I guess it's time for you guys to do what we hired you for." Enid took the broom from KO's hands and shoved it into Sparko's instead. "Later, noobs." She disappeared in a poof of smoke, replaced by a small log decoy. 

"You want us to clean up all that?" Sparko pointed to the parking lot completely covered in robo-debris, which backup stockgirl Pink Turtle was already starting to sweep up with a comically-tiny hand broom and dustpan, while backup helper Potato was trying her best to drag over a garbage can about three times her size.

Rad made a quick finger-guns gesture, and turned to the exit as well. "And fight any other Darrells that show up. But don't worry, you got this! You've already got one Darrell under your belt already!"

"And if you're not done cleaning before we get back, we'll help you finish!" KO smiled up at him before he finally followed, leaving the backup bodegamen to their gargantuan task.

\---

It wasn't clear which made Darrell more uncomfortable, the small, worn vest with a name tag reading "Potato" still pinned to its blue fabric, or the frigid stares his former enemies gave him as he showed up for his first day of work.

Enid in particular snarled at him, her boots already aflame and ready to kick him apart. "Mr Gar, you can't just hire one of the Boxbots!"

"Why not? With Potato puttin' in her two weeks notice two weeks ago and KO...gone..." He glanced out the doors at one of the newest craters in the parking lot, the sunglasses barely hiding the sorrow on his face. "The position's open, so may as well fill it."

Rad stepped forward. "But he's a villain! You can't expect us to work with him!"

"I don't." Gar pointed to the special wristwatch he wore, and that his employees did as well. "Radicles, Enid, from today you two will only be handling secret missions, and not-so-secret missions. There's going to be a lot of 'em now with Shadowy Venomous and TKO runnin' amok."

"But...who'll protect the plaza?"

"It's in good hands, don't worry." He nodded to Darrell, whose discomfort only increased. "Dendy and Carol are waitin' for us upstairs. Let's move."

As he turned to leave without any of his usual fanfare or theatrics, however, Sparko tried to catch his attention. "Uh...Mr Gar? What about...us, Sir?"

Inspecting his formerly-backup bodegamen with an almost imperceptible sense of pride, Gar hummed in thought. "Darrell's gonna need someone to show him the ropes around here, a mentor I guess. That's your job now, Sparko. Otherwise...business as usual."

He nodded as he slipped back into his office, leaving his employees to their new tasks. Unsure where to even begin on his, Sparko considered checking his employee handbook for the fifteenth time for any instruction it may hold, but recognizing the same level of anxiousness on his newest coworker's face he decided that perhaps it was best simply to start with an introduction.

"So...I guess we're workin' together now!" Cautiously, he extended a hand to Darrell, though the robot hesitated to take it. "Name's Sparko. Hey, no hard feelings about blowin' you up a couple weeks ago, right?" Darrell stared down at the gloved hand, obvious fear in his eye, until Sparko finally pulled it back. "Oh well, it was worth a shot."

Motionless, but his voice shaking, Darrell finally spoke for the first time since being hired. "Um...what do you want me to do first?" 

Sparko looked around the empty store. "I guess cleaning would be an okay place to start?" He gestured towards a bronzed cabinet off to the side, containing a variety of cleaning implements and with "8 Ways Cleansing" carved into its top. Darrell wasted no time fulfilling his first orders, grabbing a mop and a bucket from the cabinet, his only further words to anyone being to ask where he could fill it with water.

Enid, meanwhile, lagged behind Rad as he rushed to the air garage for their first "not-so-secret" mission, taking a moment to plant a final goodbye kiss onto her precious counter. She turned to her successor, a serious yet somber look in her eyes. "Take care of her for me, Sparko."

Sparko nodded, and she laid her hands on his shoulders, gritting her teeth at the rather uncomfortable static feeling crawling up her arms but bearing it anyway. "And remember...the counter is power. You're in charge now." With Darrell beginning to mop only a few feet away, she switched to a hushed voice so the robot couldn't hear. "Watch your back around him, okay?"

"I will."


	2. Starved

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo, just a quick heads-up, certain parts of this chapter might be a little uncomfortable if you've got any eating-related issues. 
> 
> Sorry to put the heaviest chapter right at the start, but the rest gets much lighter, and you can get through it, I believe in you.

It turned out, mentoring new employees was far from the grueling task Sparko had envisioned it to be, at least when it came to this newest recruit. Darrell took to his cleaning tasks quite well, expertly mopping, buffing, shining, and polishing everything he could get his claws on, almost to an obsessive degree. 

Sparko's counter was spotless, and he hesitated to touch its surface and smudge his own reflection. He glanced towards the robot, who was scrubbing a small, persistent stain on the floor near the Power Ball display, just as he'd thought there was nothing left that he hadn't put maximum effort into.

"Darrell, I think this place looks about as good as it needs to for now! Why don't you take a break?"

"A...break?" Darrell barely even looked up from the floor. "Don't I have to keep working?"

"You can take breaks if you need 'em, Darrell." To his dismay, Darrell didn't seem to agree, returning to scrubbing the floor, and he tried again. "Hey, come on. It's lunch time, and the place isn't busy. S'not like anyone's gonna be mad at you!" Sparko motioned for the robot to follow him, which after some consideration, and a quick double-check to make sure the store was still acceptably tidy, he did.

Darrell's boots stopped right at the door to the bodega break room, though, and he scanned the space beyond while his coworker held it open for him. "Are...you sure I'm allowed in here?" 

"Darrell, you work here. Of course you're allowed!" He took a single step inside, mentally compiling a list of additional things he could clean. Among the assorted clutter were a filthy, disheveled couch that had seen far better days, a small table, and a bean bag chair, which he ambled towards.

Sparko suddenly stopped him. "Oh, the bean bag chair's Enid's, you do  _ not _ want her to catch you in it!" He shuddered. "Speakin' from experience."

"Okay…" He took a spot on the floor instead, watching Sparko prepare his lunch, throwing a simple cup of shrimp-flavored instant ramen into a beat up, barely-functional microwave on the counter, which more than once he had to use his powers to shock into still working. The teen floated about a foot above the so-called couch, refusing to touch it directly, and pulled out his phone to catch up on his Social Media feed while he ate, and Darrell took it as implicit permission to do the same.

Sighing, though, he put it away as he realized his siblings were all too busy with their own new jobs to post anything, even on their old corporate page, which now read "Boxmore -- Out of Business." He'd use his break to post something himself, just to keep that last tiny bit of their home that the robots had left from completely drying up, but the words just couldn't form, his formerly-busy hivemind slowed to almost a complete stop.

"You're not gonna have anything for lunch?" Darrell glanced across the table to his coworker, who looked down at him, concerned, with a mouthful of noodles. 

"No, I'm okay." His eye remained locked onto the ramen, and Sparko. "I...I don't need to eat. I can, but I don't need to."

"You don't even get hungry?"

"No."

"Okay, then…" Sparko kept eating, though it didn't take long for the robot watching him to become uncomfortable. "What?"

Darrell blushed, not even realizing that he'd been staring, and his face grew even redder as he couldn't even remember what exactly he'd been staring  _ at _ \-- was it Sparko, or his food? Quickly, his processor spit out an excuse. "How do you do that?"

"Do...what?" Sparko followed Darrell's gaze towards his ramen, and the disposable chopsticks he was using to eat it, which he held up for him. "Use these?"

"Yeah." He looked away, a little embarrassed. "I've seen Raymond use them a lot, and Fink used to know how to do it, but I could never figure it out."

"Well, I mean, it's not that hard." Darrell sat a little closer as Sparko showed him how he was holding the sticks, and gave a quick demonstration. "It just takes practice, that's all!"

"I guess I can try it sometime…" He sighed, letting another awkward silence fill the room, but broke it with the first thought that popped into his head. "Am I a good employee?"

Sparko nearly choked on his last bite of ramen. "I...think you'll have to ask Mr Gar that one." He set the empty cup aside, scrambling to come up with at least some kind of mentor-ish feedback for his charge. "But I think you're doin' an okay job cleaning, at least! You might want to step up your game a bit, though."

"Like how?" 

"Well...part of your job is helping people. Like, uh, customers!"

"Customers?" Darrell groaned. "But they hate me! This one lizard kid threw a full cup of soda at me yesterday, saying they were gonna stop me from destroying the bodega. It took forever to clean up the shelf I was standing in front of, and I'm not even allowed to fight back now!"

"Hey, they're just not used to you bein' a hero yet!" Sparko tried to give an encouraging smile. "Maybe you can start small. Like, just your coworkers, if one of us is busy you can help us out!" Admittedly, the checkout counter tended to be pretty lax, especially with most customers being driven away by the shadowy supervillain, and whatever kind of monster that he'd managed to turn KO into, attacking every day, but if it gave Darrell a chance to do anything other than meticulously scrubbing every square inch of the floor over and over…

The Boxmore alarm, now the TKO alarm, blared to life, interrupting the thought. Darrell jumped up, ready for battle in an instant, and he and Sparko flew (figuratively and literally) to the parking lot, where the child was already hurling a volley of fireballs towards the plaza's street sign, and where Darrell's siblings all waited for their brother to complete their transformation into Boxbot Prime to stop him.

The giant combined robot launched themselves at their assailant, while Sparko hovered back a bit, spending the rest of his break just watching the show -- the new plaza defender was a little unorthodox, but their battles with TKO beat his favorite giant mecha anime by a mile!

\---

It turned out, Lakewood High School let out for the summer a week earlier than POINT Prep Academy, though unfortunately all this meant was that Sparko got the early shift, and the keys to open Gar's for business every morning. 

Yawning, he approached the sliding doors, taking in the empty plaza, or at least, mostly empty. Off to the side there was already a line at the plaza's public bathroom, with four of the Boxbots in it, carrying toothbrushes, towels, whatever they needed to start their day. At the front the yellow robo-cat was gently scratching at the door, whining, and behind her her orange sister, the only one not carrying anything at all, suddenly slammed a fist against it as well.

"Ray, it's been ten minutes! What the heck is taking so long?!"

"Sister, please," a voice called out from inside the bathroom, "I need more time! I simply can't get my hair to stay in place, and my eyeliner keeps coming out uneven!"

Behind the orange robot, the big purple one cleared his throat, speaking calmly in contrast to his brother's panicked tone. "Can you at least let Darrell or me in with you, if you're going to take longer?"

"No, disgusting!" The green robot finally poked his head out of the bathroom, snarling, and everyone could see just how terrible his hair and makeup really were.

They seemed no less than perfect, at least as far as anyone else could tell, though what really did mar his appearance were the slight dark circles under his eyes, which Sparko wasn't even aware robots could get.

"Do you have any idea how difficult this is for me, since I can't just reboot and start over fresh? Mistakes take time to fix!"

"You were a mistake," the orange robot mumbled, which only seemed to rile him up further.

"Beauty like mine has very strict requirements, Sister, you of all people should know that!" He suddenly spotted Sparko watching them from the bodega doors, and pointed. "Ah, see, that hero's even staring at me! I can't go out in public like this!" He slammed the door, and his sister groaned in frustration.

"Ugh, now what?! He's gonna take forever now!" She glared at the intruder. "Thanks a lot, jerk."

At the very back of the line, Darrell, who had mostly remained silent and let his siblings argue, suddenly perked up as he realized who Shannon was addressing, and jogged over to his coworker. "Hey, Sparko, can I...ask you something?"

"Uh, sure!" 

"Can we, um, use the bodega's bathrooms for a little while?" The robot looked up at him, pleading. "There aren't any at the barbershop, and letting Raymond go in first is always a really bad idea. I promise I'll clean them really good, before anyone else even gets there this morning!"

He thought for a moment, and sighed. "Okay, okay...I don't think Mr Gar'll mind!" Generally, there was little accountability during the first hour of work anyway. With the front doors still locked, he passed the keys to Darrell, who eagerly led his siblings inside.

True to his word, Darrell made sure to take extra time cleaning up the bathrooms after he and his siblings were finished with them, though it was admittedly not all due to extra effort. He leaned onto his mop for support as the men's room floor finally shined the way he used to get the floors at Boxmore to do, pushing down a strange, almost sick sensation within him as he fought through yet another minor system malfunction -- he'd never actually gone this long without eating before, as he discovered he wasn't programmed to be able to handle a truly empty stomach. His father had always been there to cook something, or if he wasn't available his siblings could usually figure something out, even if it didn't always result in something one would normally consider edible. His body burned a little as his the stress on his glorb intensified, and as he worked his joints creaked from not drinking any oil, but it was still nothing. He was a robot. He didn't  _ need _ it, he repeated to himself.

All the same, he remembered Sparko's words about taking a break if he needed it and sunk to the floor, leaning against the wall, glad that his mechanical stomach didn't growl and make anyone worry about him, especially his siblings.

He shot up at a sudden knock on the door. "Hey, Darrell, you done in there?"

"Uh...yeah!" Picking up his cleaning supplies and completely erasing any sign of discomfort, he hurried out to the store proper, where Sparko was waiting for him, a big smile on his face.

"Come on, there's a customer over in aisle 3 that's havin' some trouble, I think this might be a good one for you to try helping!"

Darrell poked his head around the shelf and looked the customer over. Green vest and pants, sunglasses, lots of grenades -- yep, it was yet another hero he'd tried to kill in the past, but at least this time as the former villain approached they seemed moderately agreeable.

Taking a deep breath and leaning against the shelf, he accessed a memory file from his practice sessions with his coworkers. "Can I...um...help you today, Sir?"

The customer ignored him at first, but with Darrell refusing to leave they relented. "I'm trying to decide on the right motor oil for my battletank. I've asked here before, but all I got was bad coffee jokes…"

Darrell examined the shelf, and the containers of motor oil on it. "What kind of viscosity does your engine need?

The man paused, seemingly not expecting to actually get a response at all. "I...don't actually know? The tank mostly just looks and sounds cool, I'm not really much of an engine guy."

"Hm…" Darrell picked up one of the containers on the bottom shelf. "It's really hot out, so you may as well go with a higher viscosity to be safe, 15W-30 at least. This brand isn't too bad, tastes pretty good too, but in my systems it's kind of overkill…"

He handed it off, glancing sadly back down at the shelf full of oil as he got that empty feeling inside him again, and he resisted the urge to groan in...well, it couldn't be pain, he didn't feel that. The customer barely acknowledged Darrell's odd behavior, however, clear astonishment on his face as he slowly took his oil up front to purchase it.

As he left, Sparko almost bounced over the counter in excitement. "I knew this one would be perfect! You did great!"

"I...helped him?" Darrell squinted, confused. "I just couldn't believe he didn't know anything about what oil his engine needs, that's like, basic mechanical stuff…"

Sparko shrugged. "I hate to tell you this, Darrell, but not a lot of people  _ know _ …'basic mechanical stuff.'" 

"Ooh, I do!" From the back of the store, Radicles floated towards them. "Sparko, you check out my van's newest mod yet? I got these new missiles shaped like cats, for extra feline firepower!"

"It's definitely feline," Enid contributed, following him closely, "not so sure about the firepower though. They barely even stopped Shadowy Venomous from infecting Lakewood's water supply with flesh-eating nanites on our last mission."

"I was hungry, okay? I told you I can't aim straight until after lunch!" Rad pouted. "Geez, speaking of...what are we even doing for lunch? It's been a while since we were all together at the bodega. Well, you know...minus KO..."

Darrell started to turn away at the conversation, but stopped when Sparko spoke up. "Tell you what, Mr Gar gave me a little bonus since I've been opening, how 'bout I go grab lunch for all of us?"

"That's...actually really cool of you. Thanks." Enid smiled at him, before wandering back to the break room with Rad in tow.

"That sound good to you too, Pink Turtle?" From the stockroom, their reptilian coworker gave a thumbs-up, and Sparko finally turned to Darrell. 

"You don't have to get me anything," he said before Sparko even opened his mouth to ask.

"You sure? I'm fine with it, and I literally haven't ever seen you eat once since you got here."

"I ate at the barbershop, so I'm not hungry." He grabbed his mop, his body shaking a little as he returned to his cleaning tasks, and Sparko gave up, glancing worriedly back at the robot as he flew off in the direction of the nearest fast food place. 

It took some time for him to return, claiming poor flying conditions that day, and certainly NOT an extra-long break to mess with Weiner Kabob's electric sign for the third time that week, but eventually Sparko did, passing out hamburgers to each of his coworkers as they piled into the break room.

All except Darrell, as expected. As Sparko approached the robot, who refused to even look up from the floor at him, he gave a frustrated groan. 

"I said I'm not hungry! Besides, don't I have to help customers while you're taking a break?" He glanced around the store, but there was no one to be found.

"Darrell, come on. The customers'll be fine for a while!" Sparko held the robot's hamburger out to him, as Rad greedily snatched the bag and poured all the fries within out onto a plate for the employees to share. 

"...Why would you get me one anyway?"

"Because you work here." He shrugged. "I said I was gonna get lunch for all of us, remember? That means you too!"

Darrell eventually let him place it into his claws and lead him into the break room as well, but refused to dig right in as his coworkers were doing. "You...don't wanna just, like, split it four ways between you guys? I don't need to eat…"

"Dude. Just eat it," Enid rather rudely mumbled with her mouth full. 

He reluctantly pulled open the wrapper, still hesitant. "I'll...I'll pay you back, Sparko. When Mr Gar finally pays me."

"Hey, you don't have to worry about it!" Sparko stared at the robot expectantly, as he gulped, and finally allowed himself to take a bite. And another, tearing into the thing almost like an animal until it was gone in seconds, wrapper and all, and he even scooched in closer to the table in order to start on his share of the fries, a few tears starting to stream down the center of his face.

"Wait, I thought you weren't hungry?" Rad swiped one last fry for himself, gallantly pushing the plate closer to Darrell, a gesture which only made the tears flow faster.

"I'm  _ starving, _ " he squeaked out, barely wiping his eye so he could better concentrate on wolfing down what his coworkers all correctly assumed had to be the first thing he'd eaten all week. In between bites, the robot still tried to address Sparko, almost pleading. "I...I promise...I'll pay you back…"

He held up his hands in response. "No, it's...it's okay! Really." It didn't seem to reassure Darrell, however, who, with the fries finally gone and even the remaining salt on the plate licked clean, couldn't help but break down further, sobs wracking his metal frame.

"I'm...s-sorry…" He hid his face in his claws, and Enid finally got up from her bean bag throne, gently pulling Darrell onto it instead.

"Hey, what's going on?" She patted his back, while the rest of their coworkers gathered around, obvious concern on their faces. "What's got you this upset, dude?"

His crying didn't stop, even as Sparko offered him a few napkins to attempt to wipe himself dry, and Pink Turtle silently placed a large, scaly, yet reassuring hand on his glass head. 

"I'm...sorry I ate...all the fries." 

Enid sighed. "That's not what this is about, is it?"

"No…"

Rad finally leaned down, placing a hand on his shoulder. "You're messed up over Boxmore, huh?" In response, Darrell upgraded to a loud wail, unable to confirm the statement beyond a slight nod.

"Hey, we understand, Darrell," Enid assured him, "this whole situation's messed up for us too! We all really miss KO, even though I guess he attacks us every day…" Darrell completely ignored her, though, as he tried to force his speech synthesizer to work again.

"I miss my daddy," he eventually got out. "I miss Boxmore, and I miss Fink, and I miss...my stepdaddy." That particular word hurt more than it ever had before, for some reason. "I don't wanna be here. I wanna be a villain again. I just wanna go home..."

Darrell's fellow employees all swapped worried glances as he continued to cry, until Sparko finally floated forward. 

"Hey, come on, I'll get you home. We'll cover for you here."

"B-But…" He sniffled somehow, despite not having a nose. "I have to work."

"We'll let Mr Gar know you weren't feeling good, and had to take off." Slowly, with some difficulty due to the black hole-like nature of bean bag chairs, Darrell stood, allowing Enid to retake her spot behind him while Sparko led him out of the store.

"So, you guys are stayin' in that barbershop on the upper level, right?" Sparko had never actually been there, or any other stylist, for several reasons, most of which involved static electricity and metal scissors. But, he vaguely knew its location, and had seen its robotic owner at the bodega a few times; the fact that he and the Boxbots were related seemed almost too obvious in hindsight. "Should we call first? The place's probably crawling right now."

"No, there's a back door." Darrell wiped the last of his tears away, and switched to leading Sparko instead. "I'll show you."

The two passed Logic Cuts a short distance from the top of the stairs, and a large number of precisely-clipped bonsai trees along the side and back of the building -- refugees from the closed florist shop behind it, it seemed, after it had been a victim of one of TKO's attacks. Among the clustered trees was a door sporting a laminated "Employees only" sign, with another paper sign taped to it reading "and family," which Darrell slipped through, inviting Sparko inside as well.

The latter wasn't sure what exactly to expect inside the barbershop's back room, perhaps some storage and surplus hair care products, which was exactly what he got -- and not much else. The tiny room had nothing but a few shelves on one side, filled to the brim with cardboard boxes and books and bottles of conditioner and oil, and a washer and dryer taking up almost all of the remaining space, forcing the two to move around them. There were a few folding cots propped up against a wall, one of which Darrell grabbed and set up to sit on, not really minding as its simple frame sagged dangerously under his weight. 

Politely refusing a seat next to the robot, Sparko leaned against the washer nearby, though this still barely allowed for only about one and a half feet between them. "So, this is really where you all live now?" 

"Yeah. Mr Logic, our...big brother? Prototype? Other daddy? It's really complicated. But, he's really nice to us, and he...he's trying to take care of us. It's still not home, but it's something."

Sparko tried to visualize just how six robots were supposed to even fit in there, especially laying down to sleep, and realized they just...didn't. "It's definitely somethin', yeah…"

Following Sparko's gaze around the cramped room and suddenly feeling a hint of embarrassment, Darrell blurted out an explanation. "He lets us hang out in the barbershop too, once all the customers are gone. We can sleep wherever we want, and I usually set up by the front window."

"Oh, that's good!"

"You can't see Boxmore from there, though. That radio tower's in the way."

"You really are homesick, aren't you." Sparko had definitely been there, having spent much of his first week at POINT Prep staring out the window in the direction of Lakewood, and once he finally put the right words to that bitter feeling Darrell nodded, his eye tearing up.

"It's better here than spending another night in that box. But...I still wanna go home, even if Daddy's not there anymore. And even if I'd probably get destroyed for good like Jethro was…"

He shook his head, refusing to start crying again. "Sparko...thanks for buying me lunch."

"It's nothing, really!" He held up his hands defensively, giving Darrell a nervous smile. "And you don't have to pay me back. Just...think of it as something I did to help my coworker out, and help him fit in a little more!"

The barbershop's owner poked his head through another door across from where they'd entered, presumably leading into the shop itself, and addressed them in a surprisingly soft voice for a robot. "I apologize, Shannon and I heard you enter but were busy with a client." Seeing Darrell home from work early, and another Gar's employee there with him, his eyes widened as he entered. "Is something the matter?"

Darrell remained silent, pulling his knees up onto the cot to grip them tight, so Sparko answered for him. "Darrell's...havin' a bad day. I just wanted to make sure he got home alright."

"I'm not in trouble," Darrell clarified, but this did nothing to ease Mr Logic's understated yet clear concern.

Sometime after Sparko started to explain the day's events in more detail, Shannon snuck in past them to sit with her brother as well, with the cot under them stretched to its absolute limit. "I guess that all does make sense, Darrell doesn't eat dinner with the rest of us at all."

Logic confirmed. "He has stated that, because he eats a large lunch every day, he no longer has the internal capacity for his share of dinner each night, and it is therefore best for his siblings to have a larger portion."

Sparko gave him a confused look. "Wait...he said he eats here, and that's why he doesn't take lunch breaks at work. Like, at all."

Darrell just hid his face in his knees, ashamed.

"So you've been  _ lying _ to all of us too?!" Shannon lightly smacked her brother's shoulder. "We're not gonna starve just 'cause you eat a few batteries, you dummy! We can't even starve at all, we're robots, remember?"

He looked up as his own excuse got thrown right back into his face. "Oh. Right."

Sparko turned to Logic, as the truth finally came out -- homesickness he could understand, but this new development was something completely different. "So what the heck's really going on, anyway? This...isn't normal for him, right?"

"It is a disturbing pattern I have observed in each of the siblings," Logic replied, sighing. "After experiencing the shock of their home's and sibling's destruction, as well as their father's abandonment, they seem to have defaulted to taking responsibility for the well-being of their family as a whole, over their own needs." The robot tapped his index fingers together, a sad expression on his face. "For instance, though Shannon has complained of losing access to her favorite wig and cosmetics, she has refused all attempts to provide her with replacements, or any additional items needed for her own personal maintenance, even from my own stock. And most alarming of all, I have noticed Raymond sneaking out after dark to patrol the plaza, and to keep watch for any threats to his family, instead of sleeping."

"And Darrell's not eating…" Sparko glanced towards him and Shannon, sadly, as the former began to tear up again, and the latter locked him into a tight hug.

Logic gave him a reassuring look. "Please, do not worry about Darrell, or any of the others. This is a family matter, and we will come to a solution as a family." 

He hurriedly led the hero out of the store to return to his duties, and knelt down next to the robo-teens. "Shannon, please allow me to speak to Darrell for a moment. In private." He motioned to the door. "It is best not to leave the shop empty during business hours."

"Okay, okay…" Though she took an extra second to confirm her brother was alright, she left the two alone, while Logic took her seat.

"Darrell, I know that this week has been difficult for all of us, and that as of yet I have not been able to provide much beyond the most basic essentials. However, please do not worry about your siblings' well-being for now. In time I will ensure this is an appropriate home for you."

"But...what if we're too much?" Darrell looked up at the shelves across the small storage room, and back at Logic. "You don't have a lot. This place is so small, and we all need so much, and...I just...I don't wanna be a burden on everyone."

"You are not a burden at all, Darrell." He gripped the red robot's hand with both of his, a carefully-calculated attempt at providing comfort. "I simply...do not require much for my own needs. But, even if I do not have much to myself, I will provide for you, my family, to the best of my abilities." There was a tiny bit of doubt in Logic's voice, but thankfully Darrell didn't notice. "And you need not hesitate to look to the heroes of this plaza for assistance as well, despite your past. Particularly that boy that aided you today, as he seems to already see you as a friend."

Darrell shivered at the word. "I can't have any friends. My daddy wouldn't like it."

"I will not inform Lord Boxman of you accepting his friendship, if you do not wish it."

Logic's head spun a few times rapidly, as he ran some computations. "I want you to rest here for now," he said, gently pushing Darrell so he was laying down, and fetching a couple of warmed-up blankets for him from the dryer, which the red robot eagerly snuggled into. "Your systems may require some time to return to maximum functionality. The others should arrive in a few hours, and I believe I have come up with a plan for us all to carry out upon their return."

Back at Gar's, Sparko took point on the janitorial duties, since the checkout was still deserted, but was quickly reminded why he didn't normally handle them in the first place. While it was indeed much easier to sweep the floors when the broom picked up a static charge from his hands, making dust and debris stick to it with barely any effort, getting it all into the trash can proved much trickier. As the automatic doors slid open and a chime announced the arrival of customers, he gave up and just chucked the entire broom in before dashing back to his counter, but stopped when he saw Darrell, minus his work vest.

"Whoa, you feelin' better?"

"Yeah…" Darrell suspiciously eyed his favorite broom's handle sticking out of the trash, but said nothing. Behind him, Mr Logic led three of the other robo-siblings into the store -- the green one was noticeably absent.

"Raymond has elected to lie down for a nap, at my recommendation," he explained, though no one had asked. The gray robot held a piece of paper in his claws. "However, he has passed on a shopping list in his stead. So, all of you may feel free to pick out whatever items you wish to purchase."

Smiling at Darrell, he reached up to squeeze his shoulder. "Particularly, snacks that will be yours to eat, without any guilt." He stuck with Darrell as they shopped, encouraging him not to pass up anything that caught his eye, as well as seeking his assistance with some of the more specific items on the list, while Shannon, Mikayla, and Ernesto broke off to wander through the aisles on their own.

The robots all periodically heaped more and more random items onto the checkout counter: tons of food, bolts, batteries, a few business and celebrity gossip magazines, crayons and coloring books, several large jugs of oil, 11 bottles of shampoo that Logic actually seemed a little embarrassed by, a simple toothbrush and tube of toothpaste for Shannon, some different brands of eyeliner and a new hairbrush as per Raymond's list, cat toys, cat treats, human treats, and a single pack of POW cards. Among the items Darrell placed onto the counter for himself were numerous cups of shrimp-flavored instant ramen, which made Sparko chuckle. 

"I guess I'm teachin' you to use chopsticks after all!"

Surprisingly, Darrell gave him a friendly smile in response, the first he'd been able to manage since he'd been hired. "I'd like that."

As Sparko rang up their items all of the robots balked at the rising total, especially Ernesto. "Oh, geez, hang on. Let me put some of this back…" He scooped up a few of his items, but Logic stopped him, patting his arm and calmly pulling out a large wad of technoes. 

"I have already calculated the exact amount, plus tax. This should be sufficient."

Ernesto still hummed anxiously. "Are you sure? I can pay for my own stuff, really."

"Please do not worry, Ernesto." He passed the money to the purple robot, allowing him to pay for everything, a small gesture which did somehow seem to calm his nerves. "I appreciate your concern over our finances, but I am more than capable of providing for all of you in your father's absence. I promise."

As he spoke, he gripped both Darrell and Shannon into a quick hug, leaning down to pat Mikayla on the head as well. "And I will now be sure to make that much more clear."

\---

Another day, another early shift. And another long line of robots outside the plaza's public restroom.

"Shannon, we're waiting," Raymond called out from the very back of the line, behind even Darrell this time -- the family had finally switched up their less-than-ideal arrangement, not that the new one was much of an improvement.

"Give me ten more minutes!!"

"You already had ten!" This time Darrell was shouting at her, clearly frustrated and, oddly, crossing his legs -- Sparko didn't even realize robots had to go to the bathroom. But, as his coworker arrived and hovered by the door Darrell slowly turned to him, pleading with his eye once again.

_ These guys better not make this a habit, _ Sparko thought to himself as he unlocked the bodega's doors and motioned for all of the robots to come inside and get ready for their day. But, it turned out, they already had.


	3. Something in Common

Using his phone as a calculator, Sparko checked his answers before slipping the worksheet back into a binder that sat on the checkout counter next to him -- one more down, about 17 to go before his next class. He groaned a little to himself, but before he could get started on the next Enid walked through the doors into the bodega, utterly exhausted.

"Tough mission?"

"You know it…" She leaned against the counter, smiling in sympathy as her friend set his homework aside. "We just got a few minutes while Dendy gets our next mission together, and Rad grabs some snacks…" She shouted across the store as their coworker sadly perused the Double-Dipped Lazer Chips endcap display. "Don't forget the sodas, dude!"

Turning back to Sparko, she pulled her phone out of her pocket. "So, you still keep up on POINT Prep at all?"

At the name of the school Sparko shuddered, though thankfully Enid didn't notice. "I...don't, really. Been too busy. Why, what happened this time?"

"Just figured you'd be interested in them finally losing their first megafootball match since 200X. It was to Riboflavin Adventure Academy, and they are _pissed_!"

Seeing Sparko's eyes literally light up at the news she passed him the phone, with the relevant Social Media post displayed. "No way! And I can't believe it was Riboflavin of all places that beat 'em, their whole strategy is to just...throw broccoli everywhere."

He couldn't help but scroll through all the likes and comments underneath the post, out of habit, and snickered as he saw a familiar face. "You're kiddin', Doctor Greyman finally made an account?"

"Oh, yeah, you gotta see what he's been up to since Foxtail fired him, it's pretty good." She brought up his new Social Media profile, its most recent post showing his re-acceptance as Head of Wisdom for POINT, which made Sparko smile. The second post, though, was exactly the last thing he'd ever expected from the old alien...

"He plays Northfight?!" 

"Believe it or not. He's not very good, though." Enid pulled up one of his old matches, and she and Sparko laughed as they crowded around the phone to watch their former teacher get his butt handed to him by some green rat girl more than 50 years his junior.

In nearby aisle 2, Rad brusquely brushed Darrell aside to get to the soda he sought, the robot too lost in thought to complain. 

Mr Logic had advised him to distract from his homesickness by being Sparko's friend, somehow. But, how do you make friends? What do friends even _do?_ And his daddy wouldn't find out, since he wasn't ever coming back, right? The questions stuck in Darrell's processor as he finished mopping up a soda spill, moving towards the front of the store. Enid was still there, chatting with Sparko -- wait, they were friends, right? So, chatting was a friend thing. He could handle that! But...what about?

Moving a little closer, Darrell turned up his sensors' volume so he could eavesdrop on their conversation.

"You know, even after watchin' it with my own eyes, I just...can't see Greyman doing anything else besides teaching. Especially not e-sports!" Sparko passed Enid's phone back to her, with the video paused halfway through. "I'm glad they're gonna let him come out of retirement."

"Yeah, me too. He...needs it, and POINT really needs him too." She sighed, sadly. "Though, Elodie does seem to have a handle on all this stuff, with finally taking Laserblast's memorial down and getting rid of the honors program, and cleaning things up in general. POINT Prep's actually looking like a decent place again."

"Yeah, who woulda guessed? Elodie, the almighty leader!" Sparko had figured the star Charisma student would join POINT once she'd graduated, but becoming the leader of the entire organization so quickly was a complete surprise. Then again...he'd also figured her and Enid would end up together, especially once he'd learned about their shared history. Cheering for it, even -- but, sometimes things didn't quite work out how you expected them to.

"You know, you can still go back, dude. I'm sure they'd let you."

"No, it's okay," he replied, glancing down at the stack of homework he'd slowly been chipping away at between customers. "I've got...other stuff goin' on now! It's too late."

"It's not too late," she scoffed. "Sparko, it took me _how_ many years to get accepted, after I lost the competition to Elodie? And you won it your first time around, who says you can't win it again?"

"Enid, I...I didn't win it though."

She looked at him, confused. "'Course you did, you got in! You don't get in if you lose, unless, you know, special circumstances..."

Sparko gulped, sweating a little. "Yeah, I won it overall! But...it was just on a technicality, okay?"

"Wait, really? What kind of technicality?" She curiously leaned over the counter as he sunk behind it, and Darrell took another step towards them, intrigued, but just as Sparko opened his mouth to explain, three bags of chips and a six-pack of soda slammed right down in front of him in a pink glow.

"Ring us up, bruh!" Enid lightly punched Rad as he approached, smirking. She shook up and passed him one of the sodas on their way back to the van, daring him to open it, and they blasted off again on their next mission in a fizzy spray.

With the checkout empty again, Sparko breathed a sigh of relief, able to again focus on his homework, and not on any of his coworkers asking probing questions...

"So, what did you win on a technicality?" Finally seeing his chance to try "chatting" with his "friend," Darrell took another step towards the counter, only pretending to mop the floor by that point.

"Huh?"

"You told Enid you won something, but only on a technicality. So, what'dja win?" He ignored the irritated look his coworker shot him. "Also, what's a 'technicality?'"

Internally cursing, Sparko gritted his teeth, and blurted out the most vague, uninteresting version of the story he could muster. "I won the entrance competition to get into my old school, even though I technically lost on the...the costume round." Wait, _costumes?_ Did they really have his favorite thing in the world in common? Darrell could hardly believe his luck!

Sparko hid his face in his hands, mentally begging for the robot to find that sufficient and go back to his duties, but instead he heard the mop clatter to the floor, and Darrell hopped up and down a few times excitedly in front of him.

"Was it a costume contest?"

"Uh...not exactly? It was the entrance exam for POINT Prep Academy."

"An academy? That's...like a school, right?" Darrell's eye lit up, as he analyzed the data so far. "Wait, do you go to school for costumes?! That's the coolest thing ever!" 

"N-No, it's not that! It's a school for heroes." He smiled, confidently. "The best one there is, really! It's almost impossible to get in unless you got some serious connections, but I did, by...accident."

His confidence fading just as fast as he'd summoned it, Sparko groaned and slumped over the counter, finally giving up and spilling it all, since Darrell just didn't seem to be letting up. "There's a bunch of rounds to it, with potential students gettin' eliminated on each one, and Round 3 is designing your own costume, that you'd wear as a full hero." He shrugged. "Well, that you would, 'cept they make you wear a uniform? Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, really..."

"So what was your costume?" Darrell interrupted. "The one you made, I mean."

"Heh, the one I'm wearin' now! Minus the crop top." Breaking work protocol a little, he slipped the thing over his head, allowing Darrell to check out the hero costume he wore underneath. "It...wasn't this good, though, all I did back then was paint a few lightning bolts on my old megafootball gear from middle school. No wonder I lost that round."

"So, wait," Darrell started, as Sparko quickly put his work uniform back on, "You lost, but...you still won?" 

"Yeah…Turns out, the girl I was up against that round bought most of her costume ahead o' time, and only pretended to put it together in front of the judges. So, since that disqualified her from competing, I won by default, and went to the final round. Which...I only won because the other finalist happened to be really weak to electric attacks."

He held his head in his hand. "So, you know, two for two on wins I didn't really deserve."

Darrell glanced up at him, puzzled. "Well...if they cheated, and you didn't, didn't you deserve to win? That's something my daddy told us once, that only villains cheat, heroes never do!"

"I guess it was fair, but…" Sparko crossed his arms, as his nerves refused to settle. "Still didn't feel great, since I really didn't fit in with the other heroes there anyway, and especially when I found out what that school was like…"

"What was it like?"

"What...was POINT Prep like?"

The robot anxiously tapped his fingers together. "What was school like? I've never been to one." 

"Never?" Sparko squinted at him. "...Isn't that kind of illegal?"

"Nah, Daddy said we didn't need to go because if we're not already programmed with something we don't need to know it!" He grinned proudly.

Sparko gave a sad glance to the robot, but indulged him regardless. "Well...school's just, you go to class, and there's a teacher there that...teaches you stuff, and you take notes and do exams to make sure you learned everything you were supposed to!"

"Exams? But, if they teach you, why wouldn't you learn it?"

"Sometimes it's tough to remember everything…" He turned one of the worksheets he had out on the counter around, so Darrell could read it. "They also make you do homework, outside of class, so you keep it fresh in your mind."

"What?!" His eye scanned the various math problems on the page. He even tried to solve one mentally (When will these two trains going at these speeds from these distances pass each other?), but he gave up when his computations only resulted in an error (How can the trains even pass, they only drew one track!). 

"That's so much work though! And...I don't even understand it at all! What's the point of any of this?"

"Well, what's the point of _not_ going to school?" Sparko chuckled as Darrell passed the worksheet back in a huff. "Some people just do a lot better at learning stuff the old-fashioned way!"

The robot stared at Sparko, with rare pity in his eye. "So, that's really all you do, every single day?"

"I think I made it sound more boring than it is…" He blushed. "Every class is a little different, and some are actually pretty fun! Like, there was this one day that Doctor Greyman, my Wisdom teacher, brought in a bunch of these robotic drones he built and had us try to, uh, 'dissect' 'em. Except halfway through class he brought us all up to the front of the room to show us this cat video on his laptop, and secretly switched on all the robots behind us, and anyone who'd done their dissection right and kept their drone from turning back on got an A, while the rest of us had a serious fight on our hands!"

"What the heck was he tryin' to teach with that? Doesn't everyone know not to turn your back on an evil robot, even if we're turned off?"

Sparko finally remembered he was talking to an actual robotic drone, and shrinked back a little. "I think it was more about takin' out the batteries first…Wait, was he right? Is taking your batteries out the best way to beat you?"

"Like I'd tell a hero like you!" Despite the playful outburst, the subject matter actually didn't bother Darrell at all -- it was rare he even got to talk about any robot stuff anymore, with all the organics he now worked with, and...whatever Sparko was. _Was_ he organic? He looked like it, at least from the waist up, but Darrell swore he'd seen Sparko snacking on batteries once, just like him. "Actually no, I'd explode way before you even got to my power supply. So are all the classes just about how to defeat evil robots?"

"Nah, that was just the one time. Greyman never liked to keep on one subject, one day we'd be studying weapon specs, the next we'd be doing advanced trig! And he'd throw a pop quiz at us on all of it twice a week…" Sparko shivered, not missing those one bit. "But my Strength and Charisma classes weren't all over the place like that, we'd just have to race around the entire school, or put together a PR video, or whatevs. And if you did good enough in all your classes, you might...get put in the gifted and talented courses, to prove you're one of the best." 

A sudden chill slipped into his voice. "Sometimes bein' one of the best isn't really worth it though. Trust me."

"Why not?" Darrell gasped. "Wait, were you ever in one of those?"

"I...was." He tried to come up with anything else to talk about. "Look, all this is due tomorrow morning, and I'm fallin' a little behind. Why don't you take a basket over to that customer I saw in aisle 6 carryin' a bunch of herbs and zombie repellent?"

The robot frowned, seeing right through Sparko's excuse. "If it's called homework, why are you doing it here instead of at home?"

"Because...uh...my parents don't like me working at the dinner table?"

Darrell accepted this, finally letting Sparko breathe again as he disappeared behind the shelves. That had been too close.

\---

He didn't get much of a break, though, because the next day Darrell was already waiting for him up at the counter, leaning on his mop with the floors already shining.

"You're gonna ask more about POINT Prep, aren't you."

Darrell nodded, but let him stow away his bag from class and take his place at the checkout before finally asking the question Sparko dreaded more than anything else. "What were the gifty talent courses like?"

Sparko resisted at first, but for some reason Darrell's encouraging smile pulled it right out of him. "The ones at POINT Prep were...it was less a class and more just...special meetings, with the other honors students. You had to sneak through the halls after dark, past the guards and other teachers, and all you got your first time was a map and and a few clues, since at the end there was a secret passage you had to figure out how to open up." He scratched the back of his head in embarrassment. "Heh...I actually couldn't figure out the last one, but I happened to catch another honors student tryin' to get in, so I hid while they hit the targets and swooped in right behind 'em! Which...it turned out, was what they expected you to do anyway."

He looked at Darrell, hoping that was all he'd have to divulge, but the explanation just made the robot even more curious as usual.

"Just a secret meeting? Then why'd they call it a class?" 

"There...was a teacher there too. Actually, he was the principal of the whole school, Chip Damage."

"So it was a class! What'd he teach you?"

Sparko started sweating. "Darrell, you really don't wanna know more. Trust me." 

"Well now you HAVE to tell me, Sparko," He whined. "You can't just start talking about school, but then stop at that!"

"Hey, you asked me! And...And I don't wanna answer." If it was the truth he wanted, it was the truth he would get. "To be honest, I didn't even tell my parents everything that happened, since if I did they wouldn't ever let me leave their sight again. Think only Enid really gets it…"

A sad look crossed Darrell's face. "Is...that why you and Enid are friends?" He tapped his fingers again, blushing. "Um...are you not telling me...because you don't wanna be friends with me?"

"What? N-No, Enid and I go way back, we used to talk anime stuff before we both got accepted, and she even gave me tips on that competition to get in! We can totally be friends too if you want!" At this, Darrell's circuits started buzzing with excitement. He did it, he really made a friend! 

Sparko, though, wasn't nearly as stoked, anxiously averting his gaze. A few sparks spread across the counter as he leaned on it, causing Darrell to jump back from a sudden static shock. "There's just...some stuff there, that I...Some of it's really hard to even talk about. And even if I could...I dunno if anyone would listen. A lot of heroes don't like knowing bad stuff about the people they trust."

The robot just shook off the sparks. "I'm not a hero, and I would. It's really fun hearing you tell stories like that."

"You're _sure_ you want to know what they did to us in the honors program?"

"Yeah!" 

"It's not a fun story." He sighed sadly. "Darrell...people don't just drop out of school and give up on their dreams, just for fun.

"That's okay." Sparko wasn't convinced by his patient smile, but he still took a deep breath, his anxiety spiking as he let out the things he'd tried so hard to keep pushed down. 

"They were doing things there with glorbs. Every week Principal Damage did...somethin' to put one in each of us, and we were supposed to use 'em for a power boost, whenever we...no, whenever _he_ wanted us to use it."

"Wow, really? Glorbs?" Curious, Darrell opened up the front panel on his chest, revealing a glowing orb within. "You mean like this?"

Sparko's jaw dropped at the sight -- an actual glorb, one of the most powerful sources of energy on the planet, and one of the most difficult things for even a hero to get their hands on, right there in front of him! "That's just... _in_ you?"

"Well, yeah. All us robots are powered by glorbs. Daddy used to have lots of 'em at Boxmore!" Darrell put himself back together. "I think my stepdaddy and TKO have been eating them all since we left though. Did they make you eat glorbs too?"

"N-No, it was more like...I think he just shot us up with the energy." _Wait, eating them? You can do that?_ "That's why I left. The power boosts felt...good, like _really_ good, but they made me act...different, and once I took some time to really think about it it wasn't right that they were just using us like that. As if we were, well…" Once again he suddenly remembered exactly who, or more specifically _what_ , he was talking to, but Darrell finished the statement anyway.

"...Robotic drones?"

"Y-Yeah." Thankfully, Darrell wasn't offended by the comparison at all, as he giggled in response. "And it got even worse than that. Once I got out, I even looked into the test scores that got me into the honors program."

A tinge of heartbreak in his voice, he stared downward as he spoke. "I did get every single question right, but Doctor Greyman would always grade assignments by marking each individual question right, and wrote lots of feedback in the margins. But none of my exams had that, it was just a lot of things like 'Wowie' or '1000000%' written wherever, and the writing...it wasn't his handwriting. It was Chip Damage's." He started to feel slightly nauseous at the name. "So, I'm sure I didn't get into the gifted and talented classes because of my grades, I think they just chose me because I had power that they could use, that made me...worth more, I guess, than the other students."

Though up to that point he'd been listening patiently, at that Darrell slammed his hands onto the counter.

"And this was at a _hero_ school? I don't think even a villain would pull that! Well, Professor Venomous might, but my daddy's an old-school villain, and he wouldn't even think of doing that!"

"Yeah, it was...pretty messed up, and I'm glad I didn't fit in there now. I got out and switched schools, and my parents understood eventually, but they were still mad, since they were really excited about me going there." Darrell gave him an astonishingly sympathetic look at that last remark. "In fact...Enid and Rad and KO only knew about the glorb thing 'cause they were there. You're the first person I'm actually tellin' any of it."

"You didn't get punished for leaving, did you?"

"No, I think my parents got over it when they saw me doing a little better, where I actually _do_ fit in." Sparko pulled out his bag again, and a fresh stack of homework. "Though, since I'm not at the fancy hero academy anymore, the deal is that now they're makin' me take tons of summer college prep courses to get into another good school!"

"Ugh, not more of those!" Darrell grabbed the worksheet at the top of the stack, frowning as it contained even more math. "I mean, some math is okay, but this is way too much!"

"It's okay, this stuff's actually pretty easy! Like, almost to where it's embarrassing..." He laughed as Darrell again tried to figure out one of the problems, even counting on his claws at one point. "And...you wanna know somethin' else? The real reason I don't do it at home? It's 'cause I don't want my parents to _see_ that it's easier than all the stuff I did at POINT Prep, so they don't try and push me into goin' back!"

He was reasonably sure the answer to number 1, the volume of a sphere with a circumference of 8 inches, was pretty loud, but Darrell passed the worksheet back before continuing on. "Do you...ever think about going back? Even if it's hard, and even if they did lots of messed up stuff to you?"

Sparko considered the question for a long time. "I do. A lot." He shifted uncomfortably. "I wasn't like any of the other students there, at least until Enid showed up, but it still felt...pretty cool, that some kid from Lakewood actually made it that far. To think I could be the next big hero, alongside Elodie, and Phoebe, and that jerk Biki who always got on my case about bringin' flavored water to practice instead of that nasty sports drink...Oh, and I loved Purrcival, he was the best roommate, but man, he did NOT clean up after himself! Between his shedding and my static stickin' it to everything, our weekly room inspections were the WORST!"

Once he stopped ranting about his former classmates, Sparko looked up to see Darrell smirking at him. "What?"

"You're homesick. Like me."

He squinted in confusion. "Darrell, POINT Prep was _not_ my home. Though, I guess maybe the labs weren't too far off the mark…"

"Well, maybe not. But you talk about it a lot, and you definitely still miss it." He glanced around the store. "This plaza really isn't my home either. But, I'm starting to feel like, if I do leave here someday, even to go back to Boxmore...I think I'll miss working here." And maybe, he reluctantly admitted to himself, he'd miss his very first friend most of all.

Nearby, a customer at the pickle display innocently took a jar, causing the entire display to topple down onto them, with pickle juice spilling everywhere. Darrell just groaned, readying his trusty mop. "You know what, never mind. I still hate this place."

\---

Sparko stuck the technoes that Darrell passed him into the register, continuing the story he'd been telling before they'd been rudely interrupted by the day's TKO attack. "And then POINT took over the whole plaza and dragged everyone into their weirdo glorb-mining operation, whether you worked here or not!" He gestured towards the front doors, with a proud smile on his face, not paying much attention to the new craters just outside that Darrell hadn't yet fixed. "They had me on guard duty, until I helped the Resistance liberate the whole plaza!"

Darrell blinked. "So that's what you guys were doing those two months? We just hung out and watched movies that whole time, since Daddy and Professor Venomous were really busy playing some kind of game in their bedroom."

The robot crossed his arms, pouting. "I still can't believe they wouldn't let any of us play with them, no matter how much I asked. It sounded like they were having so much fun!" 

"They just didn't wanna play with _you,_ Glass-Brain." Shannon lingered for a moment to enjoy the milkshake Darrell had bought her, though it was unclear whether her purpose was to take a longer-than-usual break from cutting hair, or just to rag on her twin brother that much more. "I mean, I didn't ask, but they totally would have let me play. I'm the best at ALL our boards game!"

Sparko didn't dare touch any part of that conversation, though thankfully Shannon didn't stick around much longer, her loud slurping fading behind her as she returned to Logic Cuts, leaving Darrell behind.

The robot glanced out the windows again, coming up with a new tactic to stall on those craters. "Hey, Sparko, you said the name of that school you went to was POINT Prep? They don't have anything to do with POINT, do they?"

"Well...yeah. They literally run the school, and recruit new members from kids who graduate." Specifically from the honors program, he realized, feeling nauseous all over again.

"So you coulda been a member of POINT for real? That would've been the worst!" Darrell leaned on the counter, disgusted. "I mean, on top of being heroes, and whatever they were doing with the glorbs, they were REALLY bad clients back when I worked at Boxmore!"

"H-Hang on, back up a sec. POINT, the top hero organization, were clients of Boxmore?"

"Yep! They used to order a lot of parts and stuff from us, and sometimes bigger contracts!"

"I don't get it…" Sparko scratched his head. "Why would POINT be orderin' anything from Boxmore? You guys are villains!"

Darrell just shrugged. "Hey, I dunno why, but they did. We got a contract to build a fleet of buses for them once, using my daddy's wormhole transportation system, and that leader of theirs, Foxtail I think? She was on the phone for _hours_ with Ernesto, making sure all the details were right and that there was nothing in the final product that might connect 'em to us."

"The...buses?" He squinted. "Aren't you guys a robot factory?"

"Daddy used to make custom vehicles too, not just robots! But, I think that was the last one he ever did, because Foxtail was so horrible to work with, not like that one other guy in the mask who handled all their orders before she did." Darrell frowned, sorting through one of the drives in his hivemind in search of the rest of those memory files. "I dunno what even happened, but at one point she either asked something or said something or...something, that actually made Ernesto really mad, and he _snapped_ at her. And Ernesto does NOT snap at anyone!"

"Oh, geez…" Sparko snickered, by this point utterly engrossed in Darrell's story. It was only fair, after all, since the robot had listened to patiently to his own, that smile on his face the entire past couple of days having been so refreshing after seeing him mope for so long, and as Darrell took his turn entertaining Sparko for a change it only grew bigger. Though, it helped that he could _totally_ see Foxtail's gruff demeanor causing issues like that.

"And Ernesto getting mad just made her MORE mad, and I happened to be doing some cleaning in the office that day, so he grabbed me, put the phone in my hands, and stomped out of his cubicle to blow off some steam. Literally." Darrell gave a nervous chuckle. "All I could do was say 'Yes, ma'am, of course ma'am, everything will be fine!' But, Foxtail didn't stop yelling, so I eventually just told her 'Whatever the problem was, it's totally fixed now, have a terrible day!' and I hung up."

"You _hung up?_ On _Foxtail?!_ "

"That's not even the best part, though." He grinned, evilly. "Ernesto didn't lock his computer when he left, so I had access to _everything_ about her order, all the parts and prices and specs and everything. So since she was mean to me and my brother, I swapped the speech synthesizers on the buses from a generic voice, to Ernesto's! Just so she'd get a little reminder of us every single time they hit a stop!"

Sparko gasped, loudly smacking his hand against the counter, which caused Enid to glare at him all the way from the break room. "I KNEW IT!!"

"Huh?"

"Ernesto's the purple robot, right? I knew I recognized his voice from somewhere!" Laughing, he tried his best to explain. "Darrell, POINT Prep still uses those teleporting buses to this day! And they still sound exactly like your brother! And Foxtail HATED ridin' on those things with us!"

"Really?!"

"Yeah! She rode with us to an away game at Luna Nova once while her plane was in the shop, and I could see her up front, lookin' more and more ticked off every time that voice called out how much longer it was to our destination! By the time we got there she was so done she barely even coached us, tellin' us to just play however we wanted!" He laughed. "Thankfully we were good enough it didn't wreck our win record!"

It had also been quite fortunate that he and his teammates still had their glorb powerups to use for that week...

"Y'know, Darrell, all this...actually explains a lot. I don't know if POINT even _are_ heroes anymore. It's a good thing I didn't join 'em."

"Yeah, they're really lame. We're both way better heroes than they are any day!"

Darrell suddenly clapped his metal hands over his mouth. "I-I mean…" He scanned the bodega to ensure no one else had heard. "Don't...tell anyone else I said that, okay?"

Sparko giggled. "Don't worry. I think I know what you meant."

His face still as red as his outer shell, Darrell changed the subject. "You know, back at Boxmore we used to prank Foxtail every now and then, since we still had her contact info. Sending her customer experience surveys where the only thing she could say was that Boxmore was great, extra Ernesto-themed merch, this one birthday card that played a really annoying song when you opened it and didn't stop even if you took the battery out, even prank called her a lot!"

"Prank calls?" Sparko perked back up. "Man, that takes me back. I haven't pulled one of those in forever!"

"Whoa, you used to do them?"

"Among...a lot of other things. My parents started chewing me out when I shocked people for fun, so I stopped doing that, but going through the phone book and messin' with whoever you land on is a classic!"

The robot pulled out his phone, grinning. "You know what, I haven't done one in a really long time, and I think she's due. You wanna try it?"

"...Call Foxtail? Right here?"

"Why not?" Before he could object Darrell typed in the number and passed the phone across the counter, snickering. "It's ringing!"

" _What do you mean it's ringing?!_ " As an irritated voice that was unmistakably the former leader of POINT, and Sparko's former Strength teacher, drifted up from the device he held it up to his ear, responding with silence.

"Hello?...Damn it, this better not be another one o' those sales calls. This is a private number!"

He struggled to even come up with something to say, terrified of Foxtail recognizing him, but at Darrell's encouragement he sighed, pulling out one of his favorite scripts from when he used to call random numbers as a kid, and though he couldn't change his voice he adopted a completely different cadence, hoping that would be enough. "Good afternoon ma'am, I'm calling from GG EZ Pizza to confirm your order! Four pies, three with half ranch dressing and mushroom and half extra sardines, and the last one cheese and grape jelly, right?"

Darrell desperately tried not to burst into laughter, but just couldn't help it once the grape jelly pizza was mentioned, that same distinctive, nasally laugh Sparko had heard most days as the robot was sent to attack, but somehow...different. More genuine. More...cute. And barely audible over the phone. 

"...Who is this?" Sparko had to admit, her confusion at the joke _was_ pretty amusing, and he almost joined Darrell in laughter, but then she said something that nearly made the electric teen blow a fuse. "Wait a second, Sparko? Is that you?" 

There was a pause, and some shuffling on the other end. "What the heck are you doin' on that Boxmore creep's number talkin' about pizza?" Horrified, and unable to think of anything that even came close to an excuse, he hung up.

"Aww, did she figure it out?" Darrell suppressed another fit of laughter, but Sparko growled at him. 

"This isn't funny! Man, I KNEW she'd recognize me!" He gripped his helmet and sunk below the counter, shaking.

"Uh...Sparko, are you okay?" 

"No! Why the heck did you make me do that?! I was one of Foxtail's students, she's still got my record and my parents' phone number! She's probably callin' 'em up right now!"

"Pfft, nah, it wasn't _that_ big a deal. You'll be fine!" A stray bolt of electricity whizzing past Darrell's head said otherwise, though. Braving the risk of getting zapped he ducked behind the counter as well, kneeling down next to Sparko, as he shuddered and an aura of excess electricity sparked around him -- even if the signs were different from his own, the robot recognized their cause immediately. 

"Here, my siblings do this whenever I have a panic attack, and it calms me down." Gently, he placed one hand over Sparko's goggles, blinding him, and ran the other over the top of his head a few times. Admittedly, the gesture didn't have nearly as much effect on Sparko as it did on Darrell, the sudden physical contact merely making things that much more awkward, but he eventually did close his eyes and take a few deep breaths, and the nervous energy he literally gave off died down. Darrell released him and backed up, letting Sparko recover the rest of the way on his own.

"So you get 'em too, huh?"

"Yeah…" Darrell blushed. "Ever since I was little. I watched a scary movie with my daddy, and after that whenever I get too scared I just...shut down." 

Sparko gave a still-shaky smile. "Mine are whenever I think I messed something up. I get too caught up in everything that could go wrong, and end up focusing on worst-case scenarios, you know, like my parents findin' out I just prank-called Foxtail."

"They probably won't though." Carefully, Darrell helped him up, the usual shock from touching him far from a concern to the robot, despite being literally made of metal. "Foxtail usually doesn't get back at us, she never even blocked my number after all this time! She'll probably let this one go too."

"I hope so…" Sparko took another deep breath, finally feeling his nerves settling.

Sadly, Darrell glanced back out to the parking lot, and at a few customers beginning to make their way towards the checkout, realizing just how long their break had lasted.

"So...did you really mean what you said yesterday? That you'll be my friend?"

"Sure, if you wanna be friends! Between the pranks, and the panic attacks, and...thinkin' POINT's a bunch of losers, we already got a little in common, anyway!"

"A little in common?" Darrell took a moment to consider this. "Do you like making costumes?" 

Sparko stared at him, and eventually shrugged. "Uh...yeah? I'm not any good at it though." 

"Do you like cowboys?"

"They're alright." He smirked. "You like anime?"

"I watched some with Raymond, it's okay! There's even one about cowboys that we can watch together!" 

Starting on the customers, Sparko waved him off. "Then I think we're gonna get along just fine, Darrell."

\---

Enid dropped to her knees at the sight, mouthing a silent prayer of thanks to both Cob as well as Mr Gar. 

Her offering of a cup of instant ramen was far, far too small for the grand experience of being the first to use the brand new microwave in the break room, but it would have to do. She placed the food inside, pressed the appropriate buttons, and stared in awe, her face inches from the glass as she watched it spin inside, with zero explosions or short-circuits or fires to be seen. 

Aside from the distant memory of KO's precious smile, and Red Action in a bikini, it was truly the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.

Outside, though, Darrell listened through the door, and as the microwave turned on he gestured towards the counter with a snicker, which Sparko returned as he removed one of his big rubber gloves. He pressed a fingertip into a nearby electrical outlet, using his powers to connect himself into the circuit that ran from the front of the store all the way back to the break room. It was a simple matter to feel his way through the wiring, cursing a little as it proved to be rather poorly-maintained, and find the outlet that the new microwave had been plugged into. Just a little current manipulation, and…

"AAAAHH!!" The door slammed open, throwing Darrell across the store, as Enid stuck her head out, seething with rage. " _Who broke the new microwave?!_ "

She immediately locked onto Sparko, who was laughing too hard to even respond, leaning over the counter while desperately trying to hide his ungloved hand, the evidence of his crime, which ultimately proved an empty effort. 

"How. Dare. YOU."

"It's okay, relax Enid!" Sparko could barely breathe, let alone speak, but the sight of a flaming pair of boots did wonders to fix that. "I didn't break it, I just...tripped the breaker on that outlet. Just flip the switch in the back and it'll work again!"

"You _better_ be right about that," she growled as she stomped back to her lunch, glaring at Darrell as he refused to get up from the floor, still in stitches along with his coworker at their prank. Eventually he made his way up to the counter to reward Sparko with a well-deserved fist bump.

"You were right, that was hilarious!"

"Oh, that was _nothing!_ You shoulda seen what I did the day they replaced the cafetorium switchbox at POINT Prep, and wired in the entire PA system…" 

Hearing Darrell's loud giggling all the way in the break room, Enid sighed, starting on her ramen as nearby, Rad opted to skip the microwave altogether and chow down on his still-frozen Pizza For One. 

"Dude...of all people, why the heck did _they_ have to become friends?"


	4. Be Gay, Do Crimes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter with the violence warning. Consider yourself warned.
> 
> Also, according to an old bio on the Krew's tumblr, Sparko's parents being inventors who accidentally created him in their lab is canon. Everything else about his family and his background...I completely made up.
> 
> (Please don't do crimes, even if you are gay, kiddos.)

Once again, Darrell had to set about six alarms on his phone to remind him to stop working when his shift was over. In fact, the alarms were also to remind him that he had an end to his shift in the first place, since part of his hivemind had usually worked overnight back at Boxmore, and not even all his time with his former enemies could make stopping to rest for the evening feel normal.

Hanging up his mop, he surveyed the empty bodega, ensuring nothing was too out of place for him to correct when he opened the next day. The keys in his hand felt strange as he locked up, as did the enormous amount of trust in him they signified. He even took a look around the rest of the plaza, considering where to go next -- Gar's was closed, as were most of the stores admittedly, but the arcade and coffeeshop were still open, and the robot surprised himself by actually being excited to spend his evening at the plaza having fun.

He really wasn't just an enemy who'd gotten abandoned by his father, and was stuck working there anymore -- Darrell had become a real Lakewood Loser. And worse, he  _ liked _ it, at least more than his siblings, who all still struggled with their new lives. 

And for a moment, he wondered if it was all thanks to the teenager who strangely sat at the bus stop, a full two hours after his own shift had ended. "Oh, hey, what's poppin' Darrell?"

"Sparko, I thought you already went home!"

"I tried to! It's...pretty windy though." He pointed out a few trees a short distance down the street, which were smoking and charred as if they'd just been struck by lightning, and rubbed a sore back from getting blown into each of them. Pulling out his phone to check the time, he frowned. "And the bus is really late, so I bet it broke down again…"

The robot turned towards his own home on the second level of the plaza, then back at his coworker, confused. "So, you don't live here?"

"No, I live on the other side of town!" Darrell's confusion grew. "You know, Lakewood?"

"But isn't this Lakewood?"

"Yeah, Lakewood Plaza Turbo is  _ in _ Lakewood! You...You didn't think Lakewood was just one shopping plaza and one evil robot factory, did you?" Sparko facepalmed. "You really did, didn't you."

"Hey, how was I supposed to know there was more Lakewood? I've never been there!"

"Your dads never took you?"

"Well..." Darrell thought a moment. "Daddy and Professor Venomous did take us a few places, like the amusement park and the mall in Neo Riot City, and my siblings and I used to sneak out and walk to the next plaza down the street to that one burger place, and Fink and I once went to get ice cream down there too. And I used to drive the Boxmore trucks to different suppliers and villain lairs all over, in Neo Riot and Battleburg and the Danger Zone!" Amusingly, he used his internal GPS to find the approximate directions for each, despite not being able to identify Lakewood itself. "But...I've never been to any other Lakewood than this."

Sparko laughed. "Seriously? That's...Okay, that's actually pretty sad, that you don't even know anything about your own hometown." He glanced back up at the bus stop sign, sighing. "It's a long flight, so I don't think you'd wanna try it with me, but if I could drive a car or somethin' I'd totally show you around!"

"Heh, I could drive you! But I don't have a car either…" Darrell plopped down onto the bench as well, despite zero need to catch the bus. "But, I've got my license! I never had to use it, though, since those lame-o cops never could catch me…"

"You have a driver's license?!" Ignoring the last part of his statement, Sparko stared at him, astounded, as Darrell finally produced and passed him the card itself as proof. "Whoa, it's real!"

He turned it over and over in his hands, even holding it up to the light to see the holographic seals within the plastic. "How bad was the test?"

"Test?"

"The...test you had to take to get this?"

"I didn't take a test!" Darrell giggled. "My daddy used to make 'em when he was in college by hacking the state database, and he still had the printer at the factory!"

Sparko's astonishment only increased with this new information. "Wait, this is a fake?!" It was certainly the best fake he'd ever seen, though once he looked it over again there were a few tiny details that gave it away -- listing Darrell's age as 21 when he was still clearly a 6-to-11-year-old robo-teen, for instance.

"Hey, it's their fault for not changing the design since then…" Darrell took back his fake license, stowing it away again. "It's like they  _ want _ us villains to get away with it!"

The pair grew silent, as the bus continued to not show up for Sparko. 

"How long have you been waiting here, anyway?"

"About an hour and a half." Sparko shrugged. "I'd call my parents to see if they could pick me up, but they're probably busy at the lab right now…" 

As he trailed off, Darrell's gaze drifted across the street to his former home. There were several large Boxmore trucks still out front, somehow laying completely untouched, even when surrounded by rubble and broken robot parts from its inhabitants' rampages. An idea crossed his CPU, and he turned to Sparko, an innocent smile on his face.

"You wanna go steal a truck?"

Sparko looked at him like he was absolutely insane. "Um, no? I'm not a villain!"

Darrell shrugged. "Well, we'd be stealing  _ from _ villains, so I don't think it counts as evil." A darker tone slipped into his voice. "And besides, those trucks aren't theirs anyway. Nothing at Boxmore is, no matter what my stepdaddy says."

He stood, offering his hand back to Sparko. "Come on. I'll get the truck, you show me around Lakewood, and I'll get you home. Way better than waiting forever for the bus to not show up, right?"

Sparko gulped, but eventually took Darrell's hand, letting the robot lead him away. "Only as long as you're doin' the evil parts. I got hero rep to keep up!"

"Don't worry, I got this!" He didn't want to admit it, but it felt strangely good having Sparko's hand in his own -- must have been the static electricity. "Since I started working here my villain rep's tanking anyway…"

The two didn't dare approach Boxmore from the front, instead crossing Route 175 about a block down and stealthily making their way back to the factory, hiding in the bushes behind it as they surveyed the lot. Along the way they passed a large grassy field, overgrown and unkempt, but with the yard lines, goalposts, and several craters from past explosions still clearly recognizable. 

"You guys had a megafootball field out here?"

"Oh, yeah! You used to play, right?"

" _ Used to? _ " Sparko shot him an offended look. "I still do, and I'll have you know that with my help, the Lakewood Plaza Turbos took fourth in the state playoffs! They...took fourth last year too, after we kicked their butts at POINT Prep..." He sighed, lost in memories for only a moment before they pushed on.

Just beyond the field was a loading dock with a few of the abandoned trucks still present. Darrell started to step out of their cover towards the nearest one, but Sparko pulled him back. "We might wanna try another spot, there's a camera right on us!"

Darrell squinted up at it, and smiled. "Don't worry, nobody's gonna see us with that!"

"You sure?"

"Those red cameras all feed into my hivemind. So, I'm the only one who can see us through it." Darrell reached up and waved to the camera, smiling, as the camera itself seemed to return the gesture, panning back and forth slightly.

"What about that one though?" Sparko pointed up at another security camera overlooking the parking lot, this one not red, and definitely not moving.

The robot's hand shot down. "...Oh. Guess my stepdaddy put more up." Slowly, they moved to a spot without any of the new cameras, making a mad dash to the nearest truck and hiding behind it well out of sight.

Darrell tried the door, to no luck. "Aw man, when did we start locking these?"

"You don't happen to have the keys, do you?"

"Nah, I don't need 'em. Let me try something."

It took a few tense minutes of poking around inside the lock with his sharpened claws as an impromptu lockpick, with neither of them daring to breathe in the meantime, but Darrell eventually managed to unlatch the passenger door and crawl across to the driver's side. 

"I'm in!"

"Yeah, but we still don't have the keys!"

"Pfft, I told you, I don't need keys! Watch this." Carefully, he ducked under the steering wheel and unseated a piece of the plastic covering, exposing a few wires running from the truck's ignition into the engine. He ran a claw along them for a second, searching for the one he wanted, then yanked it out, and to his companion's shock he bit right into it, stripping it down to the copper with nothing but his razor-sharp teeth and spitting out a few sparks onto the mat below him.

"Wait a second, did you just stick a live wire in your mouth?" Sparko blushed a little, but quickly regained his composure. 

Darrell looked up at him quizzically. "You can't do that?"

"Well,  _ I _ can, but...doesn't that usually kill people?"

"It's like the only thing that  _ doesn't _ kill me!" Laughing, the robot unplugged and stripped a second wire in the same manner, and tapped the exposed copper pieces together. Instantly the engine turned over a few times and roared to life. "It worked!"

They took their seats, as Darrell put the truck into gear and pulled out of Boxmore's lot as fast as he could, watching the mirrors nervously for any shadowy villains that may have taken notice of the crime.

"Man, I didn't know you knew how to do that!" Sparko smiled at him. "It was pretty cool...you know, for somethin' super illegal."

"You...You thought it was cool?" Darrell felt his face start to overheat, but a little extra voltage alloted to his cooling fans took care of that problem. He checked the mirrors one last time; to his relief there was nothing following behind them but a thick trail of dust. "To be honest, I've...never actually done any of that before. I just saw it in a movie once." Sparko's expression dropped, to Darrell's horror, and he scrambled to change the subject. "So, uh, how do we get to the rest of Lakewood again?"

"Oh, right." He pointed out in front of the truck. "You just keep goin' straight along 175, this turns into Main St."

They passed a sign that confirmed. "It's really that easy, huh."

Darrell drove for a while without much in sight yet, as loud, smooth jazz blared through the cabin, until finally Sparko couldn't help but say something. "Is...that on the radio? Or somethin' you just had in?"

"Ugh, it's one of Ernesto's 'party mixes.' He used to drive these all over too." Careful to keep his eye on the road, Darrell ejected a heavily-worn cassette tape from the radio, and held it out to Sparko. "Here, you wanna hold on to it for me? It'd be nice to see if I can get it back to him when I get back to the barbershop."

He eyed the thing fearfully, pulling away in his seat. "Me touching that wouldn't be a good idea, even with the gloves. Trust me." Darrell dropped it into a cupholder for safekeeping, tuning the radio to an equally-grating country station instead, while Sparko continued. "The first time my dad ever grounded me, I'd asked if I could play one of his old videos game, so he set up the console he still had from when he was a kid, put in his favorite game, handed me the controller, and the instant I hit start the whole thing glitched out and died. I apparently fried the whole board on accident, since we couldn't ever get it to start up again."

"Geez, he punished you for that?"

"Oh, he didn't punish me! Just got me one of those static bracelets that I had to wear to ground myself, any time I even wanted to  _ touch _ something old and electronic again." He laughed. "My dad's the softie, my mom's the one you gotta watch out for sometimes!"

"Sounds kinda like my stepdaddy, he used to be really nice to us…"

"He used to be  _ nice _ to you guys?" At the thought of the sadistic villain that almost always accompanied TKO on his plaza attacks, Sparko shuddered. 

"Something...happened to him, I think." The uncomfortable atmosphere started to get to Darrell as well, with his synthesized voice cracking. "He started dressing in all black and flying around, and started being really mean to every single one of us, even Fink, his own minion! And then he made TKO live with him, and they destroyed all of Jethro, and kicked Daddy and the rest of us out. It was...kinda like someone else took him over." The robot glanced over at his passenger, his eye wet with artificial tears. "You think maybe one of us made him mad?"

Sadly, Sparko reached down, patting his hand a few times as it rested on the shifter. "That sounds like his problem, not yours." Eventually, Darrell's smile returned, as they finally reached Lakewood proper.

Sparko had never really seen Lakewood as that remarkable a small town, a few shops and office buildings and apartments scattered around, but as they finally began to pass a few of those Darrell saw each one as a new marvel, and he craned his mechanical neck to get a better view as they passed. 

"So, the town hall is purple?! That looks so cool!"

He eyed the building suspiciously. "They must've repainted since the last time I went through here, it used to be red." As they passed it, though, he grinned. "But, you see that little park right next to it? My mom used to take me there to play catch all the time! Heh, it was fun tryin' to see how high I could fly, it ended up being way higher than she could throw!"

"Whoa, your mom really played catch with you?" Darrell's dad never did that! 

"She did, and after, we'd usually go to that bakery right there, across the street! Oh, and turn here, next street's a one way, the way we  _ don't _ wanna go." As the streets narrowed and twisted Darrell expertly maneuvered the large truck, following Sparko's directions exactly. 

"Wow, that building's huge!" As they stopped at a red light Darrell actually cranked down his window to peer out and up at it, particularly the sign in front. "So, that's what a school looks like?"

"Yeah, it's Lakewood Public School!" He giggled as Darrell excitedly pointed out a student literally hanging from one of the upper floors, barely visible from the road. "Guess Ms Quantum suspended someone from school again."

The light changed, and a curious Darrell brought his head back inside. "Did she ever do that to you, Sparko?"

"...Once or twice." A month, but that was irrelevant. "And that's the high school, where I go now!"

"It's not as tall," a disappointed Darrell observed.

"There's not as many students there, a lot end up going to other schools. Like, POINT Prep."

Sparko finally directed him past the Lakewood Museum, temporarily closed so they could switch out the rare candy exhibits for something new, to the industrial district, and to a small laboratory tucked between a couple of large office complexes. "And don't get too excited, but this might be the most important spot in this whole town!"

"...Lakewood Electrical Engineering Technologies? Why's that so important?"

With a chuckle, he answered. "Because that's my home!"

"Wait, you live...at a lab?"

He shrugged. "I kinda have to, my parents run the place!" Giggling, he gestured to a dark window on the top floor. "My room's all the way up there, and I keep the window unlocked so I can just come and go, without gettin' in the way of all their experiments. Especially since they tend to get...you know. Explode-y."

The truck slowed, with Darrell's excitement dropping along with the speedometer. "So...I guess you're home now." He checked that the route they'd taken through town was stored safely in his internal GPS, so he could make it back to the plaza on his own, but surprisingly, Sparko shook his head.

"Hang on, there's one more thing I gotta show you." He nodded toward a nearby intersection. "Go straight this way. I'll let you know when we get somewhere good!"

\---

They drove around town for a full hour, passing the same places again and again as the late afternoon sun set, until Sparko finally ran out of stories to tell, and Darrell started filling in.

"Okay, let me make sure I got everything," Sparko said, squinting. "You fired your dad out of a  _ cannon _ , into the  _ sun _ , where he just  _ lived _ for three whole months, while you ran Boxmore all by yourself? All because you were jealous of your baby brother?"

"Boxman Jr was NOT my baby brother," Darrell snarled. "At least, I'll never consider him that. But, my daddy did come back eventually, and we were cool for a while until he left us at the plaza."

"No wonder you didn't think any of my stories were that crazy, your family tops 'em all!" Outside the window they made yet another lap of all the places Sparko spent his childhood, and he frowned at the memories they conjured. "My life's  _ too _ normal sometimes. I would kill for one as exciting as yours!"

"Even if that means getting abandoned by your daddy to live and work with your worst enemies, and get attacked by your stepdaddy and stepbrother every day?"

"Uh...maybe not that part." They drove an open, empty stretch of road on Lakewood's outskirts, and Sparko motioned for him to pull over onto the shoulder.

"Finally!" Darrell followed as his friend left the truck to stretch, and scanned the empty lot around them, a long-forgotten "For Sale" sign laying on the grass. "So, what's so good about here?"

"There's...uh…" Sighing, Sparko scratched his head. "There...isn't anything. I made that up so you wouldn't have to drop me off at home yet. So...So we could keep havin' fun!" He and Darrell leaned against the truck together, laughing.

"You know...maybe I should stash this thing somewhere, and we can do this again now that I know my way around Lakewood!"

"Or, you know, we could just fly! Or...walk."

"Yeah…" The thought of perhaps holding onto his friend's hand again as they did so filled Darrell's hivemind, but he pushed it down, and playfully kicked the truck behind him. "I'm still keepin' it though!"

"Where the heck are you gonna hide a big truck?"

"I'll find a spot." Now, it seemed, Sparko did have to go home for real, since there was nothing else in Lakewood to see, though Darrell still stalled, not yet ready to part ways. "You think there's anything cool in the back of this thing? It handled pretty heavy back there."

Sparko poked his head around the back of the trailer, finding it latched with only a puny padlock. "...You don't need keys, right Darrell?"

"Nope! Especially not on something as lame as this." He motioned for Sparko to step, or rather float, aside, as he readied his arm cannon. "I'll just use a light touch, though!"

He did not, accidentally blowing the doors clean off, and leaving absolutely no trace of the padlock. It was far too dark to see exactly what treasures were held within -- while the sun was setting, there should still have been enough light to see inside. Not really paying much mind to the bad lighting, though, Darrell simply reached inside, pulling out some rusty machine components and discarded packaging, as well as a few empty cans of oil. 

"Darn, just trash. I was hoping I'd at least have some spare parts in there, in case I needed 'em!" He leaned against the open truck, exasperated.

A detached Darrell head, its lifeless eye still open and with a big vacant smile, the expression Darrells usually had by default when they were disconnected from their hivemind and sold to customers, rolled out from under the truck. Darrell himself shrieked at the haunting way his wish had suddenly been granted, jumping back into the trailer for safety, as an extremely confused and equally-frightened Sparko huddled in close.

Somewhere in the dark behind them, a low, hollow laugh rang out. "Yep, nothing but trash in here, alright. I think it might be time to clear it all out…"

Something neither of the two could see pushed them out of the truck, that laugh echoing around them. Darrell looked up first, whimpering, as Shadowy Venomous leisurely sat right where they had been, a half-amused, half-menacing look in his eyes.

Somehow, he'd followed them all the way from Boxmore. 

"You know, it really is sweet you keep thinking about me after all this time, Darrell. How I visit you every day, how you're so worried about whether you hurt my feelings, how nice I tried to be to all of you kids…"

Sparko shot Darrell an alarmed look. "Has he been…?"

"He has shadow powers now," Darrell explained, "I think he spies on people with 'em." Sparko glanced at the shadow he was barely casting across the ground -- he had never felt so fortunate to be a literal light source. Still, though, even if he didn't cast much of a shadow, the villain in front of them still posed a very real, very big threat, no matter how good a fighter he was. He was still only a hero in theory, after all.

"Darrell," he whispered, "I think maybe I really, really do want to go home now."

"Oh, please, do stay!" Shadowy laughed again, every single word dripping with mockery and malice. "I wouldn't  _ dream _ of ruining your little...outing, especially not when you two are having so much fun together!"

He floated back into the shadows, but the very next second he was somehow behind Darrell, gripping the robot's shoulders uncomfortably tight as he loomed overhead.

"Well, whadda ya say,  _ boy? _ " The disdainful, familiar tone he'd used on that last word made Darrell's circuits shudder, somehow. "Did you have fun? Get it all out of your system?" A sick smile spread across his face. "Impress your little boyfriend with this stunt?"

Darrell's fans failed him, as his systems threatened to overheat again. "H-He's not my...!"

He turned to Sparko. "And what about you, too?  _ Did _ he impress you?" 

"That's not what's goin' on at all!" With only a tiny blush spreading across his face, he gave Darrell a worried look. "...Right?"

"Sparko," he whispered, breaking free of Shadowy's grip, "just get out of here. I'll handle him."

"But-"

"He's my stepdaddy." Darrell's voice shook, unconscious uncertainty creeping into the statement. "I know what he's capable of. Please, go."

"Oh, it's so sickeningly sweet..." The villain's forked tongue made its way across his dull purple lips, as the shadows surrounding him twisted around his hand and hardened to form sharp claws. "You really are so much like your father, Darrell. An  _ idiot _ through and through."

Tears welled up in Darrell's eye, and he formed his arm cannon, pointing it at the man who had once been his stepfather. "Professor Venomous...please don't say that about my daddy."

"Don't say what?" Not bothering to correct the name, and in fact reveling in Darrell's confusion, he floated closer, his face inches from the robot's cannon and just daring him to fire. "That he was too stupid to see the poisonous snake his precious professor really was?"

Darrell hesitated. "Still have that soft spot for your stepdaddy, don't you Darrell? Well, what if I told you  _ he's the one in control right now? _ "

He suddenly slammed his claws into the robot's side, tearing into the thin metal with almost no effort. The shadows deformed and twisted around Darrell's feet, knocking him to the ground, down for the count in seconds.

"It's such a shame you've only got this one body left, and this'll be the last time I get to rip you to pieces," he hissed, jabbing at the back of Darrell's head with his boot, as he struggled to look up towards Sparko again, half-hiding behind the truck. The robot was terrified as well -- not for himself, but for his friend -- and could barely open his mouth to tell him to run one last time before Shadowy stomped him into the dirt, giggling.

The surrounding air crackled with energy. "Get off him." With the villain not even reacting, Sparko tried again, his voice rising to a shout. " _ Get off him. _ "

Finally, he looked up, grinning. "I guess he did impress you after all."

"I told you, that's not what's going on here!!" A massive discharge of electricity shot across the battlefield, which Shadowy easily dodged, his dark form seeming to turn almost into a liquid in midair, but he was cut off by another stray bolt, which had shot off alongside it at an angle and that he'd seemingly not accounted for at all. Sparko gasped as he crashed down and stumbled along the ground, shaking sparks out of his scarf -- he'd actually hit him!

He acted fast, not giving Shadowy a single chance to recover. Instantly Sparko was in the air, raining lightning upon his target, before swooping in to pin him down. He hadn't planned anything beyond that -- the class scheduled for the day after he'd dropped out of POINT Prep was all about capturing a villain and turning them in to the proper authorities, which he deeply regretted missing at that moment -- but he held Shadowy in place, victorious.

For only a second he glanced back to Darrell, hoping that he could assist in the capture, or at least be conscious to witness it, but his face fell as the robot remained motionless on the ground, a small crack visible in his braincase.

Shadowy hissed, not really bothering to struggle. "I can't believe you actually beat me!"

Sparko couldn't help but smirk, and gloat a little to his prisoner. "I...Of course I did! Villains like you are nothin' to a POINT Prep honors student!" He omitted the word "former" from that statement, guessing it didn't really matter in the end.

"POINT Prep, huh…" An evil grin spread across Shadowy's face, and he dropped right to his knees and out of Sparko's grip. "Gosh, I guess I really don't have a chance then. There's nothing I have on me that could possibly help me win against you, not even the glorb in my pocket…"

"The...what?"

He pulled out his glorb, that grin becoming more and more menacing by the second as he took in his opponent's reaction. "It's a good thing you never got your hands on this, with all that power I bet you would have beaten me twice as fast. Maybe you'd even have been powerful enough to save Darrell…"

With Sparko shaken by this new development, Shadowy easily turned the tables on him, grabbing and pinning him to the truck while still holding that glorb right in front of his face, close enough that its bluish light reflected in his goggles. "Well, interested?"

Was he...offering it to the hero? For only a second he actually considered taking it, taking that power to fight off Shadowy Venomous for real. It was pretty obvious now that his previous victory had been only a ruse, that Shadowy had lured him into this situation, and that he truly had no other chance to win. That he had no other way to even escape, or find a way to help Darrell, unless he had another hit of that sweet, sweet power...

At his hesitation, though, Shadowy just smiled, and quickly shoved the glorb into his mouth, swallowing it. 

"Oops, my bad, guess you're not really that interested after all." Sparko jumped as for the first time in his life he was actually shocked, by a jolt of shadow-based electricity. "I'll admit though...it really is sweet. You two failures  _ deserve _ to be defeated together."

Jagged claws scraped across Sparko's cheek, then grabbed the front of his crop top, and Shadowy slammed him head-first into the hard ground. 

He woke up on the bench back at the bus stop in Lakewood Plaza Turbo, where it was nearly pitch black, save for the faint glow of his own lower body flickering back to life.

"Wait, did...we..." Sparko looked around, trying to reorient himself -- clearly, hours had passed while he was unconscious, and this was far from where they had encountered the villain. Was that fight even real? There was a dull pounding in his head, and he wiped something off his cheek, his glowing eyes widening as they revealed a streak of dark, dried blood on his glove. 

The fight had definitely been real, and he wasn't dead, by some absolute miracle. And that meant that the rest of the day was real too -- stealing the truck, showing Darrell around Lakewood...watching Shadowy Venomous destroy him before he even got to put up a fight.

There was a metallic glint somewhere next to him on the bench, which he finally focused on, seeing Darrell lying there, his limbs twisted into an uncomfortable-looking position and... _ something _ oozing from the deep gash in his side, and from the jagged stump where his arm had at some point been snapped in half at the elbow, pooling into a viscous black puddle on the pavement below. He was still out cold, and Sparko carefully tapped at his shoulder a few times, to no effect. Darrell didn't even seem to be breathing, which made him even more nervous for a few seconds, until he remembered that robots didn't necessarily need to breathe.

"Come on, man, wake up! Or, turn on or whatever!" He roughly shoved the robot, even shaking the bench a little with the effort, but Darrell stayed inactive. He couldn't just  _ leave _ him there, for his coworkers or Darrell's siblings or even their few brave remaining customers to find in the morning. And there was simply no way he could lift and carry several hundred pounds of broken metal to someone who could help. What if they couldn't fix him? What if he got blamed for Darrell being hurt, and worse, what if he never woke up, and they thought Sparko had murdered him? Could he survive being in prison? Would his parents ever forgive a villain like him? Would...Darrell forgive him, for not being able to protect him?

"What do I do now..." He sank back down, barely keeping afloat in a sitting position and cupping his head in his hands, sparks running along the metal bench below him. He was so preoccupied with the horrifying scenarios rushing through his panicked mind that he didn't even hear the faint buzzing somewhere within Darrell's chest, of a fan whirring as a few startup processes ran within his CPU.

Darrell grunted a little -- cold boots were already a pain, and being greeted with a wall of error messages and warnings contained entirely within his head definitely didn't help. He blinked a couple of times as he couldn't place where he was, trying desperately to search his network for his current shell's GPS coordinates, with the darkness lit only by a faint yellowish glow somewhere next to him obscuring any data that could speed the process along.

With the robot twitching a few times, Sparko sighed loudly in relief, clutching his chest. "Oh thank Cob, I didn't murder you!"

"...What?" Darrell blinked again, activating a light somewhere within his eye socket that turned it into a flashlight bulb. He looked around some more, vacantly, illuminating a little of the empty parking lot. "Huh. I thought heaven had cornfields?"

Sparko watched the dazed robot closely. "I think we're alive."

"...Oh." He finally downloaded the GPS coordinates, placing him precisely in the plaza bus stop, and looked down at his detached elbow. "That explains a lot."

Sparko winced as he suddenly shined the bright light directly into his face, and gasped. "Whoa, y-you're hurt!"

"Huh?

"The red stuff! My daddy said that when that stuff comes out of an organic they're hurt really bad!"

He shifted his gaze downward, giving Sparko light to inspect his wounds again, and he finally noticed more scratches and a few faint blue and green bruises along his arms as well. 

"It's not really that bad, I'll be okay. Will...you be okay?" he asked, motioning towards the widening oil puddle. Darrell didn't really respond, still drowsy, so this time Sparko tugged at his remaining hand to help him up.

He didn't want to admit it, but it felt strangely good having Darrell's hand in his own -- must have been the near-death experience they'd just been through.

"Come on, you still got the keys to the bodega, right? Let's go get cleaned up." Darrell wobbled dangerously as Sparko led him only a few feet from that bench, barely able to move his entire leg underneath his damaged side and hip, and by the time they reached the doors he passed him the keys as he struggled to stand. With Darrell's flashlight eye lighting the way through the dark store they reached the bathroom, and once inside the robot flopped down right onto the floor near one of the stalls, its cleanliness far from a concern by that point. With a steady, bright light source overhead he poked around his damaged components as Sparko did the same in the mirror, groaning as he finally saw the size of the dried scratches along his face and arm.

"Oh man, he got me good!" He dabbed at his injuries with a wet paper towel, wiping off the dried blood to reveal the jagged but thankfully shallow cuts below. "These better not get infected. How you holdin' up?"

Darrell was still unsteady, but also much more alert than before, his systems busy running a few internal diagnostics. "He nicked an oil hose, but I'm not losing a lot. Just needs a patch and maybe a top-off. And I can replace my arm, no problem, those are plug-and-play." He sighed. "The worst is my leg, when he scratched me he cut the very top of the hydraulic line, right under the pump, so I can't move it at all. I can fix everything, even that, but I dunno where to get new fluid…"

Sparko paused, understanding some of those words. "Is...that bad?" He pointed to the scratches on his face. "Like, red stuff bad?"

"It's not red stuff bad." Of course, there were also the numerous errors still blaring through his mind, and a monumental tiredness on top of it all, but without a way of rebooting into a new body his physical repairs came first. "Also...did you have the tape? The one from the truck? I couldn't find it anywhere on me."

Sparko's eyes widened. "I didn't have it, I'm not good with that stuff, remember?"

Rechecking every part of his body he could think to stick something small like that, Darrell facepalmed. "It must've still been in there. So much for giving it back to Ernesto, not that it really even matters now..." He looked up at Sparko, an unusual helplessness in his eye. "I can't even get up the stairs to the barbershop like this."

Sparko floated closer to the robot, experimentally grabbing onto his remaining arm and pulling as hard as he could to try and lift him into the air as well -- just that arm alone had to be at least a hundred pounds! He let go, taking a moment to catch his breath. "Yeah, that's not happening. Just what the heck are you made of, anyway?"

"Mostly titanium alloy, steel, and reinforced plastic. I'm one of the light models, if you can believe it."

"You're kidding." And here Sparko thought he was  _ strong _ , from all his hero training, but just a few seconds had shattered that idea completely. He suddenly had more respect for Enid, Rad, and even KO than ever before. 

Flying to the door, he reassuringly looked back at his friend. "You just hang tight, I'll get someone to help!"

"Already taken care of, son." Mr Gar blocked him in the doorway, still wearing his sunglasses despite it being well after dark. "The security cams got infrared, so I watched both of you come in. Some o' the robots are already lookin' for parts out back, and makin' sure that creep really is gone." 

Behind him, an extremely worried Mr Logic stuck his head in, covering a tiny gasp as he saw Darrell's condition. Gar allowed him and an equally-distraught Raymond past.

"Please just relax, and tell us what parts you need. We will ensure your repairs are finished by morning," Logic calmly assured him as he held the red robot's hand, and offered a shoulder to lean onto as his drowsiness returned. He nodded to Raymond, who was already in a heated texting conversation with his siblings. 

"Stepfather is going to pay for this," he whispered through clenched teeth, as Darrell weakly listed off specific error codes and part numbers for him to pass on. Unintentionally adding insult to Sparko's injuries, Raymond effortlessly lifted his brother up and carried him like he was nothing, and with him secured the robots hurried away, without the least bit of concern paid towards Sparko, the only thing even close to it being Darrell sadly looking back at his friend from around Raymond's shoulder as they disappeared into the night.

Thankfully, though, Mr Gar didn't follow. He placed a heavy hand on the boy's head, shook it out as he got shocked by accident, but then replaced it for good. "I didn't call your parents. Figured it might be best if you told 'em what happened yourself, so they don't have to worry any more'n they are already."

Sparko looked up at his boss, smiling. "Thank you, Sir." Gar locked the doors behind them as they finally left the bodega empty again for the night.

Carefully, using his own glow, he found his way back to that bus stop bench, making sure he sat on the side that wasn't covered in oil, and pulled out his phone. As the screen turned on he was greeted by several missed texts from both of his worried parents, and a couple from Enid, who they had apparently assumed he was hanging out with and contacted when they got no response. No more buses would be arriving at this hour, and he dialed, preparing for what would prove to be the most uncomfortable ride home of his life.

"H-Hi, Mom? Oh, yeah, I'm okay! Really! It's just...N-No, I'm, um, not  _ that _ hurt...Mom...Mom! Look, can you, uh, just come pick me up at the plaza?"

\---

It was hard to resist fidgeting with the bandages the next day as he worked. Sparko's injuries really weren't as bad as they looked, but his parents didn't want to take any chances, and thus he was forced to show up to work looking like a half-unwrapped mummy in a crop top, with his arms covered in gauze and a big cloth pad taped over the scratches on his face. None of it stung as bad as the feeling in his chest as he watched Darrell start to empty out one of the trash cans just outside the nearby doors, though.

A replacement arm was simple enough to find, and his damaged fluid lines and internal components had been an easy fix, but he was sporting some duct tape as makeshift bandages wrapped around his still-wide-open midsection and the cracks in his braincase, making his injuries just as obvious as the significant limp he would walk with until that order of industrial-grade hydraulic fluid came in. The two of them were an absolute mess, and had avoided speaking or even making eye contact with each other the entire morning, making it difficult to deny to their coworkers that  _ something _ had happened the previous evening after work.

As he lounged by the front of the store, being as publically useless as possible while waiting for the next mission to roll in, Radicles looked between the two of them. "You guys get into a power battle yesterday?"

"You could say that…" Even if it wasn't the full story, Sparko couldn't help but feel like he'd fought and lost, both a battle and a friend.

"Excuse me?" A customer tapped Rad's shoulder to catch his attention. "One of the toilets in the bathroom didn't flush right."

"No problem, I'll take care of it." He turned to the window. "Hey, Darrell!" As the robot answered his summons, he swapped his trash bag for a plunger, an unspoken order which he understood immediately and trudged off to fulfill.

Sparko decided to take his break a little early. "Hey, uh, I'm gonna go see if he needs any help. Someone cover for me?" With Pink Turtle silently stepping in to manage the counter in his absence, he followed Darrell into the bathroom.

There was a loud, rubbery ringing as Sparko entered, and peering into one of the stalls he identified the sound as Darrell angrily smacking the overflowing toilet with the plunger.

"Uh...I don't think that's how you use that," he said, snickering.

"Well I tried the other way, and it isn't working! Whatever's stuck in there just doesn't wanna get plunged!" Frustrated, Darrell tossed the tool aside and jammed his brand-new arm right into the bowl, not caring that he was shoulder-deep in contaminated water.

Careful to float well out of the way of any splashing, Sparko watched him work. "Hey, I'm glad you're okay after what happened last night." He waited for a response, but Darrell was just a little too preoccupied to manage one. "You...You didn't really wanna talk to me earlier, so I didn't get a chance to say that." 

He winced as some of the water spilled out right onto Darrell's damaged abdomen, but thankfully the tape wrapped around it didn't let anything in. "I'm sorry I couldn't stop Shadowy Venomous. I really tried, but...I couldn't. I just froze, until he..."

Darrell sighed. "It's okay." He pulled his arm out, obviously failing to find the blockage. "He's really strong, nobody can beat him. That's why I kept tellin' you to run, but...I'm really glad you didn't." He looked up at Sparko, the bandages all over him making his circuits tighten in guilt, as he remembered all the red stuff that they covered up. "Even if you got hurt too, and I was...I was scared you wouldn't want to be my friend anymore because of it."

Sparko just laughed, to his surprise. "Of course we can still be friends! What else would we be, after stealing a truck from a supervillain and gettin' the crap beat out of us for it together?" 

"You wanna be friends... _ because _ we both got hurt?"

"Because we got each other's backs! And because everything that happened before it, uh...impressed me, I guess. For a villain you really are kinda cool." He giggled a little, at the circumstances in which he was admitting such a thing. "Even though now you're sitting in toilet water."

Darrell glanced down, and shrugged, focusing more on one of his threaded processes repeating Sparko's words over and over. He'd impressed Sparko after all!

"I'll be fine. And...thanks." A deep blush filled his artificial face, and he fought the urge to dunk his entire head into the toilet to hide it. "For a hero you're really cool too. I wish I coulda seen you fighting Shadowy for me," he admitted, making Sparko blush even deeper.

After a short pause for both of them to regain their composure, he held up his dry arm, shaking out the wet one a little. "Hey, uh...there's a button right on the back of my shoulder, kind of inside the socket, if you press it and twist a little my arm'll pop right off. Can you...do that for me?" Despite the unorthodox request, Sparko obliged, handing the robot his own detached limb, which he shoved into the toilet for a second attempt at dislodging whatever was in there, this time with twice the reach.

"He was right, though. It was Professor Venomous in control," Darrell mused as he dug around in the pipes.

Sparko stared down at him. "How do you know?"

"If it was the other guy, the one who took him over...we wouldn't still be alive." He looked up at Sparko with a serious look in his eye. "He's not a villain, he's a monster."

"...He really is."

Darrell suddenly hummed in surprise as, somewhere in the pipe, his hand hooked onto something solid. "I got it!" With the toilet finally draining around him he fished out a large, familiar, square-shaped item, gripped securely in the arm that he nonchalantly reattached. "A...Lord of the Loot lunch box?"

Peeking over Darrell's shoulder, Sparko smiled wide. "Man, that used to be my favorite movie back in middle school!" However, Darrell was even more excited to see the thing again, hurriedly wiping it off with a paper towel before throwing it open right there. And upon seeing its contents he gasped, wiping free-flowing tears. Inside, wrapped in a plastic sandwich bag as the box itself wasn't exactly watertight, was Ernesto's old jazz tape, which he extracted and hugged close.

"...Okay, I think I'm missin' a couple things here," Sparko commented as he scratched his head.

Through his tears, Darrell hurried to explain. "This is Fink's favorite lunch box. She must have gotten the tape off Shadowy and left it for me in the pipes, so I could get it back to Ernesto after all!" He finally stood, and turned to the sink to wash both arms thoroughly -- he never could understand what the big deal was, but for some reason organics really didn't seem to like toilets, or anything that had been in one.

Even with the tape back in his possession, though, there was a new problem. "Um, Sparko, do we sell tape players?"

Trading Darrell another round of towels for the tape, he gingerly held it by the corner of the wet, smelly bag it was encased in. "I'll go ring one up for you."

\---

Soft jazz drifted through the barbershop late that night, to Ernesto's pleasure as he lounged in one of the salon chairs, though spread out in a blanket nest across the floor below him Shannon groaned in  _ dis _ pleasure.

"Can you kill the music already? Some of us need our beauty sleep, you know…"

"There's three more songs to go, Shannon, I'll turn in once it's done."

"I am afraid I must agree with Shannon," Mr Logic chimed in. "The music is quite distracting, and Darrell's repairs are proving to be much more complicated than anticipated."

He didn't respond, and Logic turned back to the red robot, holding him still on his cot underneath the shop's big front window while tightening a few more screws in his outer casing.

"There, the top portion should be secure. Now we only need to reattach the lower portion…" His gaze shifted to the bottom of Darrell's new, scratch-free midsection, though Darrell sheepishly swiped the screwdriver out of his claws before he could get started.

"Uh...I think I should finish the rest of it myself. Thanks, though, the top part's always the hardest." 

Logic nodded, allowing Darrell to proceed as he wished while he eagerly retrieved a book from one of the shop's counters and settled into another chair. "Eugene...I mean, Mr Gar will open the bodega for you again tomorrow morning, so by my calculations, once your repairs are finished you should be able to get approximately five and a half hours of rest before your next shift starts. Six, if Ernesto turns off his music ahead of schedule."

"Nah, let him have it," Darrell muttered, turning away for a little privacy as he removed part of his pelvic plating to reach some of the screws he needed to replace. "I can sleep through it!"

Shannon snarled at her brothers. "Well I can't, it's hard enough sleeping through your snoring, Darrell!"

"I don't snore! That was a lie Fink made up!"

"You do. Trust me." Ernesto and Logic both nodded to her, confirming, as she carried her blankets to the back room. "You sound just like Daddy! Which is...kinda nice sometimes, but dangit, think I'd rather deal with Raymond getting up for a glass of oil every five minutes and Mikayla's...grooming, tonight."

She stayed for only a moment before reappearing in the doorway. "Raymond's gone again."

"Oh no…" Mr Logic and Ernesto immediately looked out the front window, and upon spotting a dark, pointy shape patrolling the plaza they rushed outside to catch him, leaving Darrell alone in the barbershop listening to smooth jazz, which he wasted no time turning off and stumbling back to his cot to finish putting himself back together.

Slowly, without any of his siblings there to disturb him, he drifted off to sleep, one of the memories from earlier in the week that he'd refused to file away in his hard drive automatically replaying as a simulation of a "dream." He remembered looking over at Sparko in the passenger seat through tears, and his friend's hand gently resting on his, easing his worries only slightly but easing them nonetheless. Sparko didn't have to do that. In fact, no one ever did that for Darrell except for his siblings, and even then only on rare occasions, so he probably  _ shouldn't _ have done that, since they were only friends. But, Darrell had to admit he liked it.

For the first time, he was actually glad his father had just left him there, and no matter how much Darrell missed him a tiny part of his remaining hivemind guiltily wished that Boxman would stay far, far away. Even if he'd set him free, there was no way his he would approve of the feelings Darrell slowly started to accept he was developing for the hero.

"Ha! We caught you!"

"Wh-wha?!" Darrell shot up, his CPU racing with desperate excuses for his father -- it wasn't serious, he didn't mean any of it! It was just a weird dream he had! It was a movie he'd seen once, or one of Raymond's trashy romance novels that he'd swiped! He was messing with him, as a prank! He just wanted to pay him back for buying him lunch that one time! But, as the camera lens in his eye groggily focused his siblings' excited faces came into view around him, as did the phone Shannon held out, with an audio recording displayed on its screen.

"You...caught me?" He shook the last of the sleep from his artificial brain, as Shannon cackled.

"We caught you on tape, Darrell! Told ya you snore!" She tapped the play button, and the thing played...it wasn't him. It was only a recording she'd made of their dad long ago, that she'd kept in reserve and was playing just to make fun of him. Except, as Darrell listened, there were a couple of snorts in there that definitely weren't normal for Lord Boxman, and eventually some indistinct, high-pitched mumbling that was definitely his voice.

"...I  _ do _ snore. And I sound just like Daddy…" And since Darrell was usually the first of the siblings to fall asleep, he didn't have any knowledge of their own embarrassing sleeping habits to counter with, to try and preserve the very last of his dignity. He just groaned and collapsed back into his makeshift bed, while all of his siblings did so as well. Of course, none of them could actually sleep until Darrell's comforting snoring started up again, with that memory of Sparko replaying once more in his mind. 


	5. Cheat Code

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See if you can guess which old Sega game I had just ragequit on before (re)writing part of this chapter.

"Wow, I can't believe you guys really had more Super Shaving Cream in the back! Thanks!" The strangely-bearded fish man wandered up to the counter to pay for his items, while Darrell waved, an exhausted look on his face.

"Happy to...help…" He brushed some leftover gloop off of his outer casing, lest it eat through the metal, and made one last spot check for mimics before finally addressing Dendy, seated on the floor nearby as she finished and posted her newest video. "How was that?"

"Aside from your unsuccessful scheme to steal Ms Mummy's back room maps while she slept, I would say you did quite well, Darrell. In fact, the video already has three likes and one comment!"

"A comment? Let me see!" 

He knelt down to peer at the holographic screen, which displayed a "comment" from Red Action, consisting of the word "lol" and three thumbs-up emoji.

"I suppose feedback is feedback," Dendy remarked, minimizing her screen and replacing her backpack onto her shoulders.

"Aw, you're not gonna go already?" Darrell pouted as she stood.

"Relax, Darrell, we can record more videos for KO's old channel later. But, I have one that I must finish while I am here…" 

As the fish customer left she headed up to the counter behind him and pulled a small camera from her bag, which she trained onto the cashier. 

"Sparko, do you have any comment on the recent rumors that you have turned to the dark side?"

Glancing down from the newly-posted video on his phone, Sparko sputtered. "Ex-Excuse me?"

A tiny smile on her face, Dendy clarified. "You know, that you have...become a villain. Following your abrupt departure from POINT Prep Academy despite being one of their top students, and several public appearances with Darrell, a known henchman, some are convinced that you have turned your back on heroism altogether!"

She opened another screen, a damning headline reading "Promising Hero Hopeful Shocks The World, Becomes Second Student Ever to Charge Out Of POINT Prep!" displayed across the top. And if the tasteless electricity puns weren't enough, the photograph below it of him and Darrell grabbing lunch at Weiner Kabob made him shiver; who on Earth had even taken that picture, and why did they have to pick the day that they'd both ordered Weenie Jr meals so they could play with the little plastic racecar toys while they ate?!

"Uh...no comment?" Dendy didn't seem convinced, even pausing her recording so Sparko could stop hyperventilating and come up with a slightly better answer. "Look, whoever's makin' that stuff up doesn't know what they're talking about, I'm not turning into a villain! And besides, Enid bailed outta POINT Prep first, why don't you ask her all this?"

"Because she has not become unusually close friends with a Boxbot," Dendy replied slyly. 

"Thank goodness!" Enid herself suddenly barged in, paying her friends little mind as she made a beeline for the slushie machine and took a big gulp right from the nozzle. Rad quickly followed suit, though he made sure to grab cups for both of them instead. "Dendy, can you  _ warn _ us next time our mission target is inside an active volcano?"

Rad pulled her aside so that Darrell could start mopping up the trail of sweat they left across the floor. "It was a dry heat, though."

"There's nothing 'dry heat' about magma, dude."

Observing their condition, Dendy pulled up her extensive stats on the two heroes, adding that their heat tolerance was exceptionally low.

"Hang on, is that one mine?" Sparko pointed to a third holographic screen that had appeared as well, containing his own details, and before Dendy could react he snatched it up to read. "Man, you really got everything!"

"Sparko, that is private!"

"I'll say…" He uncomfortably scrolled through his average daily schedule, down to the minute, his GPA, his POW card stats and market value, and a list of known allies, the most recent of which was…

"Darrell, friend, possible villain accomplice,  _ possible romantic interest?! _ " He glanced up at his robotic coworker, who was still trying to tackle the mess at the slushie machine -- sure, he had an...interest in the the guy, to say the least, since he was pretty different from all the other villains, and fun to hang out with, and...cute. Very cute. But he was ultimately a villain, all that really mattered to him was doing petty evil, right? Like stealing Boxmore trucks out from under Shadowy Venomous' nose. And pranking his new coworkers every chance he got. And playing with toy racecars over lunch. What hero could possibly have a  _ romantic _ interest in someone like that?

Sparko, that was who. But he didn't dare admit it, even to himself. Still in shock, he quickly deleted that part of Dendy's notes, and the 'possible villain accomplice' thing as well for good measure. 

"Hey!"

"Look, if you're gonna keep creepy stalker-level notes on everyone you know, you might as well get 'em right!" Passing the screen back to the disappointed kappa he tried to laugh the error off as just that, but his face remained bright red, to his dismay. "I do not have any…'romantic interest' in him, okay?"

"Then why were four of your last seven internet searches variations of 'How to tell a boy I like him?'" 

He whimpered and buried his face in his hands as Enid approached, less sweaty than before but definitely far from her usual chilled self as her interest was piqued. "So, Sparko's got a crush, huh? Who's the lucky guy?...Wait a second." She glanced over at Dendy's screen, the blinking cursor right next to Darrell's name giving her all the confirmation she needed.

With the icy glare in Enid's eyes finally cooling her down for good, she slammed a sign reading "Back in 11 minutes" onto the checkout counter. "You. Me. Break room. Now." Blasting the door open with a fireball, she grabbed Rad's wrist to drag him along, leaving his cup behind on the counter. "You too."

"But, my slushie…"

" _ It can wait. _ " Leading her coworkers into the break room, she slammed the door and locked it, sighing. "Look, Sparko, it's totally fine that you're friends with him, but you  _ can't _ date Darrell. Understand?"

Sparko scoffed. "Well, why not? Even if I  _ did _ like him...like that, which I don't, and I wanted to ask him out, which I also don't, there'd be nothing wrong with it!"

"Dude, you're a hero, and he's an evil robot! Rad here can give you a ton of reasons why that combo doesn't work!" 

The alien nodded, frowning. "Number one, he doesn't even have a heart at all, and he's just gonna end up breaking yours, dude. Literally, he'll cut it right in half with a sawblade!"

Enid nudged him with her elbow. "Darrell, not Shannon."

"With a laser beam!" Rad started counting his points off on his fingers. "Number two, I'm pretty sure if you kissed him you'd get, like, electrocuted or something."

Sparko, the teen hero literally made of electricity, rolled his eyes. "You don't say."

Enid preempted Rad's third argument to give one of her own. "And number three, Sparko, what if he actually convinces  _ you _ to become a villain? Like, one day you wake up and decide that being a hero just isn't what you wanna do with yourself anymore? That you actually  _ like _ being evil, instead of being friends with us, all because of him? Because trust me, dude, there's no way he'd ever consider turning good just for you."

That one finally gave Sparko pause. If just hanging out with the guy was enough to start rumors that he'd turned on all of his friends, what was to stop those rumors from coming true if he actually tried to do more than simply hang out?

Rad took advantage of the sudden silence to cut back in. "Also, number four...if you married him, that would totally make Lord Boxman your dad, right?" Next to him, Enid gagged at the thought. "Hey, it's a valid point!"

"Don't even joke about that!"

"Guys, relax!" Sparko raised his voice to be heard over their shouting. "I'm not gonna marry Darrell! Or date him! You're right, good and evil don't work out, and besides, I don't even think he likes me back…" He caught himself, and tried to backtrack. "I mean, I don't think he'd like  _ anyone _ back, if they actually tried to tell him that!"

"Atta boy, Sparko! Just say no to evil robots!"

Rad slapped his back, while Enid smiled, half in reassurance and half laughing at the sudden static shock that her coworker hadn't quite counted on getting. "We just don't wanna see you get hurt, alright? And hey, you find a guy who's actually worth your time, just say the word and I'll help you ask him out!"

"Thanks, Enid. But uh, no offense, but what do you know about askin' a  _ guy _ out?" Sparko eyed her curiously as she shuddered.

"I've gone out with a guy before! Once..." She and Rad shared a knowing look. 

The trio eventually emerged from the break room to find Dendy recording a short video of Darrell as he demonstrated a few moves with a laser sword from aisle 3, though it admittedly seemed more like a showcase of the top ten best ways to slice off your own hands. "Oh, Sparko, there you are! Could you be my sparring partner for a second?" He pointed to a second sword on the floor, but before his friend could politely refuse the alarm blared. 

"Guess TKO wants a shot at you instead!" He and Dendy eagerly followed Darrell outside, with her setting up for a record fourth video channel post in one day, while the robot trudged out into the parking lot to join his siblings yet again.

"Let's just get this over with," he muttered as he scowled up at TKO, who never seemed to tire of the daily battles, despite the robots' enthusiasm for them dropping dangerously low as they went on. It had been weeks since their daddy had unceremoniously dumped them at the plaza, and months since they'd gotten a break from the little brat trying to destroy them in general. And as the five robots fused into one giant mech, their bodies and minds entering into a strange state of being both separated and closely linked, Darrell could feel their own exhaustion within him as well.

TKO didn't give them much time to adjust, already dashing towards Boxbot Prime's legs to knock them off-balance, and the parts of their combined consciousness that centered on Raymond and Mikayla panicked, forcing the rest to jump high into the air over their assailant. As he passed underneath, though, they entertained an interesting suggestion from Ernesto, turning in midair and crashing down, pinning TKO onto the ground underneath the purple robot.

"Get your stupid butt offa me, you nerds!" 

"Get your stupid butt outta our plaza!" While TKO clawed at one of Ernesto's "cheeks" the robots giggled, picking him up out of the cracked asphalt and flinging him across the lot like a piece of litter. 

_ I hope Dendy got that one on camera…  _ Ernesto couldn't help but let his thoughts flow completely unfiltered through the combined robot, and neither could his younger siblings -- it was by far the most stressful downside of being Boxbot Prime, at least in Darrell's case, since for once he had something to hide. Resisting the urge to glance back towards the bodega to see if Sparko was watching the battle as well, he repeated the same sentence over and over to himself, drowning out anything he didn't want his siblings to hear.

_ Let's just get this over with. _

TKO burst back into the fight, sending a barrage of purple fireballs that he followed closely behind, ready to tackle his opponent as they were busy dodging. Raymond caught him out of the corner of his eye, though, and their leg moved to catch the boy in a sudden kick -- and at his unspoken request, Shannon and Darrell collaborated to successfully lasso the child while he was momentarily stunned.

"Gotcha, you brat!" Shannon gloated, tying him tighter. "Let's see you try and fireball us now!"

In response, TKO just grinned. "Well if you insist!" He immediately erupted into purple flames, turning his entire body into a ball of fire and burning the rope away. Unbound, he launched himself at Boxbot Prime's head, at Darrell.

_ Let's just get this over with! _

He called down to his brothers and sisters to move them out of the way, and TKO only ended up catching the very edge of Darrell's oversized cowboy hat, singing it slightly. But, his eye widened as, to his horror, he heard a couple of yelps from the bodega behind them as TKO crashed into it, doing a lot more damage.

"My camera!"

"My slushie!"

Without warning, Darrell forced his siblings to leap to the rescue, though thankfully aside from Dendy, who mourned the loss of her favorite camera, the other bodegamen were fully capable of freeing themselves from the rubble kicked up by their former friend. Sifting through it, Boxbot Prime finally found TKO, dazed from the impact, and Darrell surprised the others by his usual thoughts shifting into pure rage.

"You wanna wreck something, go wreck Boxmore again!" He wrenched full control of their arms from Shannon and hurled him as far as he could, overshooting the ruined factory by about half a mile, while his siblings could only stare up in astonishment. "Stay away from the plaza, jerk!"

An additional thought squeezed past his defenses and through their shared consciousness, though, as the last of his anger faded:  _ And my Sparko! _

"...Where the  _ heck _ did that come from," Shannon finally demanded. Darrell answered her by being the first to disconnect from Boxbot Prime and return to his default configuration. Hoping that she would simply forget that last thought if he didn't call any more attention to it, he knelt over the blackened remains of his lasso in the middle of the parking lot, sadly, while Sparko hovered over his shoulder.

"You can just get another one, right?"

Darrell tossed the thing aside, taking a moment to look his coworker over for any damage. "You're right, I probably can. But, are you okay? I thought TKO flew right into you!"

"I'm fine! Ducked out of the way just in time," Sparko assured him. "Though, because I did, that one chunk of concrete landed on Dendy's camera instead, so we lost the video of you guys doing that cool...uh…'bodyslam.'"

The sad news didn't bother Darrell, though, and a tiny, proud smile crept onto his face. "That one was Ernesto's idea, actually, but the last throw was all me!"

"Whoa, really? That one where you sent TKO halfway across the state?"

"Yeah, and I don't even know how I did it, either! I guess, I just...didn't want to see you get hurt again." Darrell tried to cover up a growing blush, as on reflex he purged his mind of any not-Lord Boxman-approved thoughts on his...friend. Though, given that alone was already a forbidden thought, he sighed, first from frustration, then from countless feelings he couldn't yet put a name to as Sparko gently grasped his hand and led him back to the bodega.

Somewhere in the rubble, Rad pushed a large pile of junk off of himself and held a crumpled cup in the air, victoriously. "I saved half of my slushie!" 

"Go Rad," Sparko half-heartedly cheered as he started to help Darrell clean up the mess, the two making plans to take the rest of the day off and hang out afterward as a treat.

Pouting as his small victory went thoroughly unappreciated, Rad noticed Shannon leaning against an undamaged portion of wall -- plaza cleanup was definitely not her department, nor was it any of her other siblings', as they dispersed back to their jobs.

"Hey, Shannon, have you noticed-"

"That something super weird's going on between my brother and Lightning-Butt over there?" She rolled her eyes. "Trust me, we have. Kinda makes you wanna barf, doesn't it?"

"You know...Enid's really not big on them for some reason, but I guess I don't really get to complain." He finally took a sip, but upon a sudden static shock he spit it out, his face contorting in disgust. "What happened to my slushie?!"

Dendy giggled. "Darrell added some lightning cheese while you were in the break room. It was quite amusing." She gave an exaggerated frown, obviously wishing she still had a camera to record the final result of the prank, while Rad mournfully stared down into his cup. 

"Shannon, please tell me Lord Boxman's coming back to take you guys home soon. I don't think I can take much more of Darrell."

The orange robot's eyes moistened with artificial tears at the mention of her father, but with an irritated sigh she immediately wiped every trace of them clean. "Try living in a cramped barbershop with him, or worse, being in the same body. I'd  _ kill _ for a shower right now." She pulled a sawblade from her wrist, showing she meant it, too. "Hey, Rad?"

"Yeah?"

"You keep an eye on that hero...f-friend of yours, okay? We'll take care of Darrell."

\---

Darrell tapped the two tiny jellyfish toys -- one pink, one green -- from the seafood place that he and Sparko had gone together for lunch, as if to kiss, but to any outside observer who didn't have a window into the robot's mind they could also easily have been fighting to the death. Sparko couldn't tell the difference as he took only a second to glance over at the robot from his arcade game, Darrell made extra sure of that.

"Darrell, I think I'm finally gonna trash him! Check this out!" On the screen, his character swooped up and down, barely avoiding the giant fireballs that the two-headed dragon spit as it snaked closer, but just as it reached its nearest point, and Sparko took aim, one final surprise fireball ended his game for good.

"Aaugh!" Sparko's shriek of disappointment echoed the character's, as the words "Game Over" appeared across the screen. "Man, I was so close to finally beatin' level three this time! If only it wasn't so hard to tell exactly how close or far away all the enemies are with that weirdo camera angle…" He started to slump against the cabinet, but Darrell caught him, tugging at the static bracelet clipped onto one of his shoulder plates and snickering.

"Guess now you know what it's like to not have any depth perception. You still do better than me at that level, though, I can't even get past those flying mushroom guys at the beginning!"

"Wait, you...can't?" The high scores screen came up, and Sparko pointed to the entry at the very top, signed "DRL." "But, you were braggin' to me about beating the final boss just a little while ago! That's why we came here after lunch, I wanted to see if I could make it there too!"

"Well, yeah, I beat the final boss, he's actually really easy! Almost like they didn't expect anyone to make it that far!" 

"But you didn't beat level 3?"

"Nope!" 

"Okay, then, show me how you did it." Sparko slammed his last game token into Darrell's palm. "Show me how to get to the final boss, without beating level 3!"

"Fine! Just watch a pro at work!" Stowing away his kids' meal toys, the robot stepped up to the cabinet, popping in the token and pressing Start. 

However, between the main character shouting "Get ready!" and the first level loading, he started moving the joystick in a complicated pattern. A plain screen reading "Sound Test" appeared in the level's place, to his approval.

"Wait a second, what are you doing?" Hovering over Darrell's shoulder, Sparko gasped. "Are you...cheating?!"

"Well, duh! Villains always cheat at videos game!" Darrell chose a specific sequence from the Sound Test screen -- 7, 3, 3, 6, 9, 15, 24, 42, and pressed the Coin Return button -- and the final level appeared. Stepping aside, Darrell offered the controls to Sparko, who could barely believe his eyes as he started playing.

Over the screams of his character losing all three lives faster than he'd ever managed before, some whispering at the M*Elodie cabinet down the row caught Sparko's attention. "They weren't kidding, he really is starting to turn evil."

"You're sure?"

"You saw him get the robot to help him cheat at that game! And remember him from that really bad Boxmore ad on TV two months ago, the one whose head kept exploding? He's gotta be why Sparko stopped being a superstar POINT Prep hero!"

Like a sudden rumble of thunder, Sparko loudly cleared his throat to get the attention of the giggling gossipers. "You think I'm not still a superstar hero, just 'cause I'm gettin' a little  _ help _ on a  _ really _ hard game?!" They only giggled harder, pointing behind him at Darrell putting in the cheat code again for one more attempt, and he snarled. "Well I'll prove it! Just take a look at my POW car-"

He pulled it out of his pocket and stopped, staring in disbelief at the card's face. "Wh-What do you mean  _ level 0?! _ " The others roared with laughter, and he gave up, sinking to the floor nearly in tears as he refreshed the display over and over again to no avail.

"But...I don't get it! I was so close to finally hitting level 4!" None of his less-vital stats displayed correctly either, all completely reset, an entire lifetime of progress erased overnight. "This has to be a mistake!"

Peering over at the glitched card, Darrell shifted uncomfortably. "Wait a second, Sparko, do you, um, have my card too?"

"Uh…" He did, for reasons he desperately hoped Darrell wouldn't guess, and passed it up to him, all three of their eyes widening as they saw that same level 0 displayed under his picture.

"Aw man, I was level -4! I was hoping he wouldn't use this plan…"

"What do you mean, 'this plan?'" Before Darrell could explain, though, someone turned up the volume on a nearby wall-mounted television. The thing normally displayed high scores for all the games in the arcade, but was instead tuned to Action News 52, with Dynamite Watkins outside the POW card company headquarters with a breaking news report.

"All staff except for the CEO have been evacuated safely, but the damage is still colossal. Every server, database, backup system, all in ruins! And that means, so are all your hero levels!" Behind her another explosion rang out, and the camera panned up to show TKO fleeing the scene, laughing wildly.

"It is that plan," Darrell sighed. While most of the arcade's patrons gathered around the TV to hear the rest, chattering and checking their own POW cards, Sparko stayed with him, waiting for a better explanation than anything Watkins could speculate. "Shadowy Venomous really liked to gloat about all his evil plans, even right in front of us. Stuff like blowing up the plaza, blowing up POINT HQ, blowing up another planet, blowing up the POW card company...and somehow using it to take over the world or destroy the universe or somethin' like that. He's strong, but he's a total amateur when it comes to villainy…"

On the TV, a canine employee of the POW card company stepped up to give a statement. "Well, we did have a super-secret backup server up in the cloud for a situation like this, but all the data's really outdated, and it didn't even really make sense anyway. So, we're thinkin', our next move should be a tournament, to reset all the level data!"

"That sounds exciting, Ms Carla! How about some details?"

"Oh, we'll have details! Just give us a couple hours to clean up and mourn for Mr Cardsley, and check back with us then!"

"Yep, that tournament was part of his plan too, Darrell sighed.

"I'm signing up."

The robot looked at him suspiciously. "Sparko, didn't you hear what I just said? It's all Shadowy Venomous' stupid evil plan!"

"I don't care." Sparko gripped his card tightly, shaking. "I need my hero levels back, Darrell. You don't know how important those are to me! And if that jerk's gonna be there, then I've got another chance to show him who's boss, too!"

"Sparko…" Darrell gently kicked the arcade machine as he lost to the final boss, and sat down next to Sparko. "He beat you last time! And he and TKO are gonna beat everyone there too! I-I don't…I don't want you to get hurt."

"Well, if I had more power, like a glorb, I probably could take him! But...I don't even know where to start looking for one." Sparko thought for a moment. "You think maybe there's some in that robot junkyard out behind the plaza? You guys, uh, don't mind me diggin' around in there, do you?"

Darrell smirked at him. "Actually, I got a better idea. Wait until you see what I found while I was in the back of the store today!" 

\---

Darrell eagerly jogged into the shallow pool taking up much of the room, while Sparko stayed carefully back, watching the glowing orbs faintly lighting the robot's way. "Phew, finally! Randomly-generated rooms are the worst!" 

"It's a whole room full of glorbs…" He reached up as one floated above his head, cupping it gently in his hands. "I didn't even know there were this many in the Neutral Zone!"

Darrell giggled, periodically looking up at Sparko's impressed expression as he poked at a few of them with his claws, pushing them down into the water and watching them slowly rise again. "My daddy used to have a lot more. But, this is still more than enough to help you win that plaza tournament, right?"

"You kiddin'? I could win 20 tournaments with all these!" The glorb in Sparko's hands pulsed with power, sending goosebumps up his arms. He stopped himself from attempting to gulp it down right there, though, and from indulging that curiosity he'd managed to keep in check until that point. "Darrell, it might not be a bad idea for you to grab a couple too. Don't you need, like, a recharge or somethin'?"

"Nah, I run on refined glorbs. If I tried to throw one of these raw ones in my power core I'd burn through it in like five minutes!"

That was about how long it took Sparko to burn through one as well, though it was more than enough time to defeat Shadowy Venomous once and for all. But, as he started to pocket a few of the glorbs for later he paused, a troubling thought lingering in his mind. "Hey, if I win that tournament, and stop Shadowy, that means you'll get to go home, right?"

If Darrell had had a heart, it would have skipped a beat -- the amount of dread Sparko's words conjured up surprised him. He'd grown to enjoy living at the plaza, and didn't want to leave it, and Sparko, behind...but his siblings did. They hated having to act like heroes. They hated having to work with heroes, and live with them. They wanted to go home, like he once had. And as their brother, there was simply no way Darrell could keep them there for the sake of his friendship, for the warmth and appreciation he found in Sparko that he'd never gotten even from Lord Boxman, or for...a silly crush, something he couldn't even share with them.

Friendship was forbidden at Boxmore, for a reason he finally started to understand. Because it got in the way of family. Because it only ended up hurting in the end. Because it wasn't  _ fair. _

"Yeah, it'll be nice. Even if...Even if I won't get to hang out with you anymore..." Darrell faked an optimistic smile, despite the pang of regret echoing in his hollow chest. He shouldn't have showed his discovery to Sparko after all, he mused, no matter how much he only wanted to help his friend, and he nervously fidgeted a little with the two jellyfish toys they'd gotten with their lunch, realizing that like the glorbs the little pieces of fluorescent plastic were glowing softly in the dark -- one pink, one green.

He held the pink one out to Sparko. "This is the one I got with my kid's meal. I'll keep the one you got, so if we can't hang out anymore once I go back to Boxmore or if my daddy comes back we can...we can still remember being friends!"

"Darrell…" Sparko just stared down at the toy, hesitating. "Didn't you need it to start up your collection again?"

"It's okay. I'll be going home, where all the rest of my toys are. The ones TKO left intact, anyway..." Darrell's face didn't match his tone, his eyelid drooping sadly. "You know, even if you didn't use that glorb to win the tournament, and even if you got beat up by Shadowy Venomous again, you'd still be a hero to me, Sparko."

_ Even if I didn't cheat, to beat the final boss... _

Sparko finally accepted Darrell's gift, and slowly pushed the glorb he held back up into the air, watching as it rejoined the others floating around the room, and the big tree at its center. "You know what? I changed my mind."

"You're not gonna fight in the tournament?" A wave of relief swept through Darrell's circuits, but it was short-lived.

"No, I'm gonna fight, I gotta prove I'm still a hero! But I won't use glorbs to do it, I'll fight Shadowy and TKO on my own! Even if that means I end up losing." The worry in Darrell's face only increased as that glorb's glow faded into the distance above them. 

"But…" Sparko had just finished his repairs from the last time! "You can't fight them on your own! What if you get hurt again?"

He shrugged. "There's gotta be somethin' else we could try. Maybe if we double-team them with your siblings? You guys fight off TKO every day, so you can keep him distracted while I fight Shadowy!"

"That could work, but…" Darrell groaned. "My siblings are so sick of TKO I don't think they'd do it!" Besides, nothing good could come of fighting alongside Sparko, with the other robots able to hear every single one of his thoughts no matter how private. 

Sparko internally sighed; no front row seats getting to see Boxbot Prime in action for him. "It was worth a shot. Hey, let Mr Gar know I won't be at work for the next few days, I got a lot of training to do before that tournament if I'm gonna have a chance to beat them alone!" He gripped the jellyfish toy Darrell had given him tight. "And, even if you guys aren't going...cheer me on, okay? It'd mean a lot, comin' from a friend."

Darrell smiled, holding up his own toy and manipulating a couple of its tentacles to look like it was waving them. "I will. And...even after we go home, I'll still cheer you on. As a friend. And...And we can try to hang out sometimes, and maybe you could show me how to play level 3 on that game, and we can even try and beat it together for real, without the cheat code!"

Sparko raised an eyebrow. "I thought villains always cheat at videos game?"

"Well...s'not like I'm going full hero or nothing, it just sounds more fun! Just don't tell my siblings, or my daddy."

"Heh, deal!" He returned Darrell's smile; Sparko had told his friends he wouldn't entertain his feelings for the evil robot, sure, but in the very back of his mind he decided that someday, one of those hangouts between the hero and the villain would indeed be a date.

Opting to take a chance on the poorly-sealed door leading out of the top of the room rather than attempt the mimic-infested maze again, the two finally crawled out of a sewer tunnel behind the plaza, and bid each other goodbye, for what they promised wouldn't be the last time.

The electric lights and neon signs around the plaza flickered to life as the evening sun set, and Darrell hurried up to Logic Cuts on the upper level, though as the automatic doors slid open he was greeted by his siblings all gathered inside, with Shannon in front, her eyes glowing redder than usual and a menacing scowl on her face.

"Um...what's going on?"

At the back of the crowd, Mr Logic started to explain, but Ernesto gently shushed him. Instead, Shannon stepped forward.

"This is an intervention, Darrell."

"A...what?"

Shannon ignored the question. "Look, you're our brother, and we love you. But if you even _ think _ about dating that stupid hero...friend of yours, we're gonna blow you to bits! Capiche?"

She pulled a saw out of each hand, while Raymond produced his spiky arm cannon and Ernesto and Mikalya displayed their sharp claws, showing that they all meant it. Mikayla even gave an impatient hiss and batted at Logic's sleeve until he joined in as well, reluctantly pulling out his shears.

"Okay, okay! I...I won't...um, I won't like him anymore."

"Good!" Shannon smiled, her work done, and the others all breathed a sigh of relief, more than ready to accept the obvious lie and return to their normal routines. They welcomed their brother back into his makeshift home, where a family dinner of roasted batteries and oil and his growing collection of cheap kid's meal toys were waiting.

He could only hope that they would all get the same warm welcome when they finally went home to Boxmore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Don't listen to Dendy, I fully appreciate every comment, even if they're just the word "lol" and three thumbs-up emoji! ;v; )


	6. A Perfect Date

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're finally post-finale! Things get a little time skippy from here on out.

It was like nothing had even changed, the three heroes reunited on the battlefield, facing down a Boxmore robot with the plaza in his sights. In fact, if it weren't for the cowboy hat on Darrell's head and the lasso tied at his hip, or the single tiny fang peeking out between KO's lips, one wouldn't even be able to tell The Shadowy Venomous Incident had happened at all.

Darrell tossed the lasso forward, expertly looping it around KO's hands and pulling him across the pavement towards him. "Don't get too comfy now, I've been practicing my ropin' skills!"

"Darrell, did you forget how this went last time?" KO grinned, gripping the rope as purple flames snaked along it towards the robot. Before he could react, they exploded right in Darrell's face, knocking him onto his back with his foes looming over him, ready to finish him off.

"Any last requests before we send you back to Boxmore?"

Darrell thought for a moment. "Actually, yeah, can I grab a snack first?" He motioned towards the bodega. "And, you know, say hi?"

"...You got five minutes," Enid growled, allowing Darrell into the store behind them, as she and her friends regrouped outside.

Darrell wasted no time in grabbing a cheap pack of AAA batteries and making his way to the counter, ecstatic at the painfully rare chance to see Sparko again. "Hey, we still meeting up tonight?"

Sparko gave him a playful smile. "My parents go to bed at eleven, I'll sneak out then!" As he handed Darrell's change back, he took one of the batteries as it was offered, popping it right into his mouth. "You had someplace in mind to meet up?"

"Here at the plaza's good," Darrell replied through a mouth full of battery acid as well. "Wait, eleven's when the last bus goes by here, right? Are you gonna fly back?"

"Yeah, it'll be dark but I'll manage." He grabbed one more battery, letting Darrell snack on the rest. "Shouldn't be too bad on another pack of these!"

As his five minutes with his friend counted down far too fast, Darrell gulped down the last of them, turning back to the doors -- it was time to be the bad guy again. "I gotta get home now, see you tonight!"

Sparko waved as he stepped outside, and looked around the parking lot in confusion, the other employees having somehow vanished. "I'm done! Are we gonna finish our fight or what?"

"NOW!" He turned, as all three bodegamen jumped down from the roof of the store, slamming the pavement with enough force to toss Darrell high into the air and all the way across the street, where he crashed right through Boxmore's office window.

"Have a punchtastic day!" KO called after him, smiling.

\---

Shortly after 11PM that night, two figures in matching dark cloaks, one floating about a foot and a half above the ground and the other lugging around a backpack containing a dozen cans of spray paint, made their way from Lakewood Plaza Turbo down the street to the next plaza over, where they got right to work on a decidedly un-heroic string of vandalism, with Darrell taking the lead on sharing his second-favorite pastime.

He managed to alter a simple traffic sign, turning "Kappa X-ing" to "Kappa Fart-ing," though only after he promised Sparko he would get Dendy a few packs of POW cards the next time he saw her to make up for it.

On a billboard for cat food, he changed the text slightly to "Cat Pood," and after a little convincing Sparko took out a marker and scribbled a small stick figure cat and a simple pile of poop right next to it.

Underneath one of Congress Woman's reelection posters, featuring her posing heroically with some text about how she refused to fall victim to villain extortion, Sparko wrote out the URL of a picture Darrell happened to have of Professor Venomous extorting money from her, while the robot painted a cartoony mustache on her face for good measure.

And on an ad reading "Weiner In Hand," Darrell had added "and in butt!", which made Sparko do a double-take. In the end, though, he concluded that it was very unlikely that sweet, innocent Darrell had any clue what that actually meant, and that he probably just thought butts were funny.

"Oh no, I meant exactly what I wrote." He flashed Sparko a shockingly devious grin, causing him to do a triple-take, as the two worked on some much more intricate graffiti in the parking lot behind Weiner Kabob.

Keeping his backpack close at hand, Darrell pulled out a few more cans of paint, adding a realistic-looking chrome detail to a tag he'd sprayed onto the side of the fast food joint's dumpster. He also took a moment to write "Weiner Kabob smells ba" on it as well, before turning towards a large poster on the fence to check his friend's progress, or lack thereof.

"Wait, what are you doing?" Tilting his head, he watched Sparko use a can of red paint over the red background of the poster, where whatever he was trying to paint blended right in. "It's not gonna show up if you use the same color!"

"That's the point!" Finishing up his piece, he pulled Darrell back with him, smiling. "The paint's the same color as the background, so it doesn't show up at all when you look at it straight on. But…" Gripping the robot's shoulders, he shifted him to the side a little, under a nearby streetlight. "When you get at an angle the light hits it different, and it'll show up!"

Barely visible on the poster was a simple, crudely-painted "POINT SUCKS," with the final letter a cool S, far from as artistic as Darrell's work but cleverly hidden right in plain sight as Sparko had promised.

"It's gonna be _weeks_ before someone notices this," he giggled.

Darrell stared at the poster a little longer, but then took the red spray paint and, quickly, scribbled a smaller version of his own graffiti tag in the corner, matching the one in his piece.

"And now when someone does notice, they'll just think I did it, so you don't have to worry about getting in trouble or your hero level going down for vandalism at all!"

Sparko took out his POW card to be sure; his hero XP total was still unchanged, though admittedly he wasn't sure graffiti-ing Weiner Kabob was evil enough to really affect him. Still, though, he accepted the gesture with a smile. Especially after he also pulled out Darrell's card once his friend's back was turned, and noticed that his villain XP had actually gone down a few points.

" _What's going on out here?!_ " 

As a gruff voice definitely belonging to some unseen night patrol reached them, Darrell grabbed his bag, pointing to the wooden fence. "So much for not getting in trouble, hurry!" The fence wasn't a match for either of them, with Sparko just drifting right over and Darrell rocket-boosting behind him, and they carefully sidled along it to make their escape.

"'Weiner Kabob smells ba?' Smells ba? What does that even mean?!" The loud voice's owner kicked at the dumpster in the distance behind them, completely ignoring both the vandalized poster right next to it, and the vandals themselves as they fled into the night.

"Man, this is why I always tagged those shipping pallets behind Gar's, nobody keeps watch there!" Panting despite not actually needing to breathe, Darrell stuffed both their costumes into his bag, before ducking into a nearby coffee shop to cool his systems. "Guess maybe some coffee isn't a bad idea, since it's so late. You want anything?"

Glancing up at a big chalkboard above the register that listed a bunch of fancy coffees, Sparko claimed a booth near the door. "Just get me a chai, okay?"

"A...what?" He perused the menu as well. "A chai latte?"

"No, a...chai tea."

Darrell smirked, mockingly. "Don't tell me you're that _one_ person that goes to a coffee shop and actually orders tea!" 

"I get coffee sometimes!" A nervous laugh escaped Sparko, as he tried to explain. "It's just...I tend to bounce off the walls when I get a little too wired off caffeine! Literally. Trust me, you do not wanna see that." Darrell had to admit he did, his curiosity piqued, but let it go, hurrying up to the counter to get their drinks. 

Next to the register was a small donation jar, a label taped to it promising that the money raised would go to local animal shelters, above a cute picture of a puppy. Leaning against that counter, he made absolutely sure that the barista's back was turned while she was busy making their order, and that Sparko was distracted playing with the tiny cups of creamer on the table, before casually slipping a few technoes in. 

By the time he returned to the table, Sparko had succeeded in building a small castle with the creamer, which he proudly pointed to. "What do you think?"

"...It needs something." Darrell thought for a second, noticing the packets of sugar in a small container on the table. He grabbed and opened one, dumping its contents right into his mouth, and carefully folded the paper into a small flag, which he stuck at the top. "Fink taught me how to do that!"

Sparko smiled, taking his tea and setting it aside to cool. "Creamer Castle never looked better!"

"Creamer Castle, huh?" Darrell eyed it nervously. "Uh...is it cool if I destroy it? I kinda want some for my coffee."

"Go ahead. They get mad if you leave 'em on the table anyway." He motioned to the counter, where the barista was already glaring. Dismantling his masterpiece "brick" by "brick," they both dumped about ten packets of the stuff into each of their cups, ensuring both drinks were more milk than anything else, before shoving the rest back into their bowl, with Darrell's tiny flag still sticking out the top.

"So what are we doing next time we hang out?" Not really caring that his coffee was still far above the recommended drinking temperature, Darrell took a big gulp from it. "I'll let you pick something more hero-y, since I know tonight was a little...not."

"Well, uh...about that…" With his rising nerves sending a few stray sparks across the booth, Sparko cleared his throat, trying to figure out the most tactful way to finally say something that had been on his mind for a very long time. "I was...um...I was thinking…We're really good friends, right?"

Darrell nodded, and he took a deep breath. 

"Well, I was wondering if, maybe we could, you know, change things up a little bit, and...and I could...um…"

Darrell suddenly jumped back from the table, shocked by a stray jolt of electricity, and the robot's heart, or where it approximately would be, tightened. 

"Do you...not wanna be friends with me anymore?"

"I'm still friends with you!" Sparko smiled, but it was strained, with a few drops of sweat leaking from under his helmet. "In fact...I wanted to ask if you and I maybe could...be a little more than that?"

"More than friends…?" Darrell squinted, trying to figure out what he was saying. "That's…'best friends,' right?" 

He shuddered, as he realized what that meant. Wasn't his daddy "best friends" with Professor Venomous, before... _that_ happened? And they moved in together, and spent so much time together, and were...family together. And if they were best friends, and Sparko wanted to be best friends with him...Cob, that meant Sparko LIKED him?!

"Well...not exactly…" Darrell sighed in much-needed relief, as Sparko desperately tried to regroup. "Maybe 'more than that' was the wrong way to put it."

Another deep breath, as he tried to keep his nerves from exploding. "I have a confession to make, I didn't sneak out behind my parents' backs tonight. They figured out we were meeting late at night a long time ago anyway, and they'll probably be waitin' for me when I get home, to tell 'em how it went." Checking on his tea, he took a sip, the caffeine instantly helping to loosen him up a little. "In fact, they kinda joke sometimes about us goin' out on...you know. Dates!"

Darrell almost spit out his coffee, the exact reaction Sparko expected. "Us? Going on _dates?_ Man, my daddy would be so mad if he heard that!"

"Oh…" His heart sunk, but he tried his best not to betray it to his friend. "Well, my parents know we're not really _dating_ , of course! We're just...friends."

If Sparko had legs, he would have kicked himself right there. Of course Darrell didn't want to go on a date for real. Of course he didn't share those feelings above and beyond their friendship. Of course he didn't LIKE him. Just getting as far as he had was pure luck, Sparko knew, and he shouldn't have tried to suggest they go further -- what if he'd ruined that as well?

"So, wait…what does all this have to do with what we're doing next time we meet up?" Darrell slowly started to piece things together. "Did you wanna go on a...a date? For real?"

"Uh...I mean, I wouldn't NOT want to, if you asked!" Sparko tried to laugh it off, pretend this was all just a joke between best friends, but inside he felt like something had just shorted out. Still, though, Darrell's response wasn't quite what he'd expected, and despite his own doubts it wasn't exactly a _rejection_ yet. "Is...Is that a yes?"

"It's a...maybe." Finishing off his coffee, Darrell stared down into the empty mug. "I...guess I gotta confess something too. I really do like having fun with you, and...I guess, I, um...l-like you too?" Had Sparko even earned the right to know that? He knew, from his upbringing, that love was something that could only be granted when some kind of expectations were met...but his father had never exactly told him what those expectations were. Perhaps, he figured, he wasn't _supposed_ to know them, because no one was supposed to meet them, especially not a hero like Sparko. "But I'm not sure if I'm even allowed to feel that way, I'm already pushing things with my dad by having a friend, and a _best_ friend might get me in a lot of trouble!"

Blushing a little, he hurried to salvage the conversation, as his friend's face dropped more and more, and as the air around their table got noticeably more static-y. "Though, if I can't like you like that, Sparko...I'll still be your friend. I promise."

"Darrell…" Carefully, Sparko laid a hand onto his claws, a gesture which Darrell turned back on him by gripping that hand tight -- it was difficult to tell which of the two was actually comforting the other. "Here's what we're gonna do, okay? I'm going to ask you out on a date."

"A real one?"

"A real one. Two days from now, at...let's say 5:30, and I'll pick you up at the plaza. You run that by your dad first thing tomorrow morning, and let me know if he's okay with it."

Darrell's face turned almost as red as the rest of him. Sparko may as well have been asking for his hand in marriage already, and the mental image of Lord Boxman's enraged face as he received the news refused to fade. "He won't be, though!"

"I still want you to ask. And if he says no...the date's off, and I won't ask again, and we'll just go back to bein' regular old friends! Just like we are now."

Another very remote possibility stuck in Darrell's processor, one that made his panic even greater. "...What if my daddy says yes?"

Sparko smiled. "Then I guess I'll see you in two days!"

It was a long walk back from the coffee shop to Boxmore in the dark, giving Darrell a lot of time to think on Sparko's invitation. His father had changed quite a bit in his time away from it all, as evidenced by the factory's smokestacks looming over the treeline without a single puff of smoke in sight -- all of the robot children needed their sleep, he'd declared as he put an end to the overnight shifts. The doors leading into the loading dock were locked, all the trucks parked, and inside all the assembly lines sat still and quiet, the only sounds being Darrell's heavy footsteps across the tiles, and some distant hammering, as well as muffled screaming, coming from one of Boxman's labs.

The cyborg himself dashed right out as Darrell tried to sneak past to his room, ducking into a nearby bathroom to run his hand under some cold water. "Ugh, Darrell! Remind me next time to aim for the metal, not my thumb!"

"Uh...okay Daddy." With his presence discovered, he followed his father back into the lab as he cleaned up and finally shut everything down for the night.

Still rubbing his sore hand, Boxman finally noticed Darrell's backpack, and the tired look on his face. "Do you know what time it is? I'm serious, I haven't looked at a clock since I started working. It isn't _too_ late, is it?"

He sighed. "It is, Daddy."

"Hey, don't worry about it, I'm not mad about you being out late!" He held up his hands defensively. "As long as you and that...friend of yours are having fun. And...not doing anything too heroic, of course. Like putting all your change into one of those donation jars for starving orphans or something, yuck!"

 _It was puppies,_ Darrell almost corrected him, but wisely stayed silent. Instead, he gritted his teeth, taking a deep breath as he finally said the last words he'd ever hoped would come out of his speech synthesizer. "Daddy, I...have something really important to, um, talk to you about."

"What is it, son?"

"I...um...I have a…a crush on someone."

He closed his eye tight, bracing himself, but when he didn't reboot right away he glanced at his father's astonished face. "Daddy, I-I'm sorry, I-"

"Darrell...that's great!"

Lord Boxman pulled him into a hug, effortlessly lifting his son off the ground in his excitement. "You kids really are growing up so fast! It seems like just yesterday you were betraying me and taking over my business by force, and now you've already got your first crush!"

Darrell hid his face in his claws, a sob bursting out of him. "I'm...I'm so sorry, Daddy…"

"Oh, you don't have to apologize!" He knew it, his father would never forgive him. "I forgive you." Wait, what?

"So, you...you're not mad about me...l-liking someone?"

"I accepted you making a...a friend, while I was away, didn't I?" Boxman slapped his back hard with his chicken claw, though thankfully the robot barely felt what for a lesser lifeform would have been quite a lot of pain. "And besides, you're not the only one! Ernesto's been taking a lot of calls for robotic limbs recently, and the quality assurance recordings have been...interesting, let me tell ya. And Raymond even admitted to me the other day that he's had a crush on someone for a very long time now! He didn't tell me on _who_ , but whenever he's ready I'll accept it!"

Darrell wasn't reassured, though. He gulped, preparing for the second part of his confession. "But, it's...n-not just a crush, though, Daddy. He...He asked me on a...date." Preemptively, Darrell recoiled away from his father, fully expecting that chicken claw to go right to his face next, but instead the cyborg gleefully hugged him again.

"Really? Oh my stars, I'm so proud!" He patted one of the lab benches, and almost on instinct Darrell climbed up onto it to sit, allowing his father to look up at him. "When? Where? Tell me everything!"

\---

"Brother, we all know that _I_ was supposed to be the first of us to go on an actual, officially-sanctioned date!" Raymond tugged at the scarf again, frowning as he tried to smooth out a few final stray wrinkles. "But, since I...never got around to asking Radicles, I merely get to experience it all vicariously through you." 

He stared right through his older brother, intensely, his razor-sharp teeth bared. "Do. _Not_. Blow this for us."

"O-Okay…" With every miniscule detail of Darrell's outfit perfected, the younger robot stepped back and held up a mirror for him to examine himself, and to ensure that his black jacket and hat, gray pants, and red checkered scarf were flawless, fitting every inch of his rather blocky body perfectly.

"Wow, thanks for helping me, Ray! The alterations look great!" It was a good thing he hadn't gone with the sailor costume after all.

At the compliment, Raymond simply smirked, confidently. "You'll slay him, Brother. I assure you."

"I sure _wish_ you'd slay that stupid hero already…" Behind them, Shannon barely looked up from her holographic phone, and Darrell lowered his voice to a whisper.

"Hey, Shannon's not TOO jealous of me, right?"

"She replaced Radicles' POW card on her dartboard with yours," Raymond whispered back, a grim look in his eyes.

"Oh…" Darrell knew quite well it wasn't just darts she was likely throwing, given that she had already been staring daggers at him the last two days. He'd definitely have to make it up to his sister for being the first of the siblings to have a _real_ boyfriend.

Just that word made him feel strangely warm inside, to the point that his internal cooling system switched into high gear for a moment. He had a boyfriend! Something that, if he'd been stupid enough to suggest it in front of his father only a few short months ago, would have gotten him discontinued without hesitation, and admittedly, he still wasn't sure if he fully believed Boxman when he said it was now okay. 

"Oh my gosh, how adorable!" Boxman himself finally trodded into the room and examined his son, all dolled-up for his first date, and pulled an old disposable camera from his lab coat pocket. "Say cheese!"

Jumping out of frame just in time, Raymond facepalmed. "Father, we really do need to teach you to use your phone camera."

"Oh, come on, waiting a week to develop these isn't so bad!" He stuffed the camera back into his pocket, while Ray quickly snapped a much better photo and sent it to him.

Rather than smiling for either of them, however, Darrell kept looking off to the side, hunching his shoulders so that he disappeared ever so slightly into his scarf. Wearing clothes partially blocked his air intakes, and he found himself breathing heavier to supplement his fans as that pleasant warm feeling turned into a deceptively system-straining chill.

"Oh, you're nervous about your first date, aren't you?" He was, just not about the parts that Boxman had assumed.

"Are you sure you're okay with this, Daddy? You're really not gonna d-discontinue me, for...going around, with a hero?"

Boxman just laughed. "I would never! Honestly, what would even make you kids think I'd discontinue you for falling in love, even with a hero?" The boys sheepishly looked at Shannon, who turned away again in a huff. 

His father still surprisingly showed none of the anger he had expected at any part of the situation, but Darrell knew his next question couldn't end well. "Hey, Daddy? Are you supposed to, um, kiss, on a first date?" The other robots perked up, clearly curious as well.

Boxman's smile finally dropped, as anticipated, but seeing the anguished look on Darrell's face the cyborg hurriedly gripped his arm to reassure him. "It...depends. If he starts it, and you want to kiss him...you can go for it. But if you don't feel okay with it yet, then a hug is absolutely fine!"

"Okay…" He sighed. "I won't kiss him, if you don't want me to."

"Look, I promised that I'd take a step back and let you kids start growing up, and have...f-friends, and dates, and stuff, so...whatever you feel is right, I'll trust you on it, Darrell." Boxman pulled his son into one final tight hug, reaching up to pat his glass head as Darrell leaned over him.

"Did you kiss Professor Venomous on your first date?"

He paused at the unexpected question. "You know...I don't think we did! We just wrecked a party, and flew around on my desk for a while. And...held hands, while we talked about our evil projects." He blushed. "But, please, don't think about me and Professor Venomous tonight. I want you to have your own experience, okay?"

Raymond tapped Darrell's shoulder. "It's 5:35, you're officially fashionably late! You'd best be going before you're un-fashionably late, though."

Darrell practically leapt out of his father's grip towards the door, but Boxman stopped him. He adjusted Darrell's jacket collar, took one last, proud look at his son, and smiled. "There, perfect." 

Darrell couldn't help but copy the expression as he stepped out into the factory parking lot. He barely took in the plaza ahead of him as he crossed the street, with his CPU racing with nervous excitement, and his stomach fluttering with a handful of robo-butterflies (which ultimately proved to be a terrible choice for breakfast), as he caught a flash of electric light waiting for him near the bus stop, seated at a bench with someone he didn't recognize in a lab coat, and large rubber gloves just like Sparko's.

Sparko's eyes likewise followed him the whole way, and as Darrell finally approached and greeted him he gulped, agape at his date's elaborate outfit. "I, uh...didn't think to dress up, sorry…"

"That's okay!" Darrell giggled "I just thought it'd be fun to wear one of my costumes!"

"...That's a costume?" he whispered, but caught himself. "Oh, hang on a second, I gotta introduce you! Mom, this is Darrell, and Darrell, this is my mom! She, uh, insisted on drivin' us…"

"This is your mom?!" It wasn't that there was no resemblance -- in fact, there was almost _too_ _much_ , as he realized the woman's figure and face were nearly identical to Sparko's, right down to the trademark smile and even the eyes, though hers weren't yellow and glowing. But... 

"...You have legs!" Rather rudely, he pointed down at them, earning a confused laugh.

"Uh...yeah, I sure do!" She glanced at Sparko, her arms crossed. "What have you been tellin' him about me?"

"Sparko just said you were an electrical engineer," Darrell interrupted. "I...thought that meant you were electrical, like him, and also an engineer. B-But human's cool too! My little sister likes to dress up as a human even though she's actually a robot cat!"

After a second of utter bewilderment at the statement she laughed, exactly the same as Sparko's, and whispered to her son as she led them both to a car parked nearby. "You know what? I like this one!"

"You like every one, Mom," he whispered back, hiding his face in embarrassment. Sparko had been on dates before, but middle school dating was stricken from the record, and he had gone to Plaza Prom with the first person who actually said "Sure, whatever," none of which counted, at least he hoped. He did breathe a sigh of relief at her approval, though, as he and Darrell hopped into the back seat together, and the car pulled out of the plaza.

Darrell just couldn't sit still, fidgeting a little as he watched various signs and other cars pass outside the window; he didn't want to admit it, but he definitely wasn't used to being a passenger. "So, wait, if your mom's human, does that mean your dad's the one you got the whole...electric thing from?"

"Nah, he's human too! I just...came out this way in the lab." Darrell eyed him curiously, but he didn't comment, so Sparko continued. "My dad wanted to come with us too, but, uh…"

"He forgot to make sure everything was grounded before testin' out a new circuit design," his mother chimed in. "For the third time this week…"

"He'll be fine! Dad's used to gettin' zapped, especially with me around."

"I can't believe how much you look like your mom, though," Darrell mused. "I don't look like my daddy at all! None of my siblings do, either!"

"I, uh...try really hard to." Sparko laughed nervously, turning away to look out the window. 

"So, what do you look like when you're not trying to?"

"Oh, he's just the cutest little lightning bolt," their driver interrupted, smiling back at them in the mirror. "But, however our little man wants to present himself is perfectly fine!" 

"Mom…" Flustered, Sparko barely hid the matching smile on his face.

True to his word, Sparko's mother didn't accompany them for long, dropping them off at the restaurant he'd decided on the instant Darrell (and Lord Boxman) had said yes, the fanciest place in Lakewood. Though, taking a few seconds to read a menu displayed out front, Sparko suddenly realized a major flaw in his plans.

"I...think this place may be _too_ fancy…" He frowned. "I can't even read half of this!"

"I think I can read some of it!" Darrell pointed out a single item. "'Omelette du Fromage', that's either an omelette or a cheese, I think!"

"Wait, you know what it's sayin'?"

"Well, not a lot, but Shannon taught me a little!" He ran his eye up and down the menu, looking for another word he recognized. "I don't think she taught me any of this, though."

"Well...even the fanciest place in Lakewood's gotta have chicken nuggets _somewhere_ on the menu, I guess." Sparko held the door open for Darrell, but he didn't budge.

"We don't...have to eat already, do we?" Darrell looked up and down the street, one of the ones he'd been so eager to finally have the chance to explore on foot, with Sparko at his side. "Why don't we just hang out for a little while first?"

"Uh...o-okay, sure!" Sparko took his hand as it was offered, silently panicking at the thought of their reservation going to waste, but he still couldn't help but smile as he was pulled down the sidewalk by the giddy robot, squeezing him tight through his thick rubber gloves.

"Hey, dumb question, but can you...feel me, through those gloves?"

"Oh, yeah, don't worry! They're just so I don't shock anyone, but I'm so used to 'em they're no problem!" Sparko squeezed his hand harder, prompting a chuckle. "Can...you feel me? With, like...metal hands?"

Darrell paused for a second, his expression dropping. "...I actually don't. I mean, I _kinda_ do, but it's...the sensors are just for temperature. So, I can tell your hand is there, because it's…" He took a quick reading. "Your hand's really warm right now, 100.4 degrees! But, I can't feel anything else."

"Really?" Sparko thought he'd felt a little warm, though he'd just chalked it up to either the weather, or the growing blush across his face. "So, is all of you like that? Just temperature?"

"Nah, my hands are numb so I don't feel it when I try to clean the toxic waste vats at the factory and get 'em melted off." Darrell laughed nervously; even if he couldn't feel those incidents they were still far from pleasant. "But, I can feel my face, and some of the spots where my shell's thinner and my pressure sensors can get activated, and, uh, well...my feet. So I don't trip over stuff. But, everything else? Totally numb."

Darrell's eye drifted downward. "Do you feel the lightning part?"

"Oh, this thing?" Sparko reached down and swept his hand right through his lower half, with it flickering a bit as electricity arced around him. "If it sticks to somethin' conductive I can feel it, but if it doesn't, no. I guess we're both half numb!"

Darrell practically skipped down the sidewalk, with Sparko almost struggling to keep up at times, until the two reached a small plaza where a few kids were splashing in a large, peculiarly-shaped fountain.

"Is that…?" Darrell squinted at the cheap brass-plated figure adorning the thing, confirming with a glance at an equally-tacky plaque at its base. "Daddy mentioned that Billiam Milliam was starting to fund public works to keep his fortune out of the other villains' hands, in case he...you know..." He gestured a couple of times toward the ground. "But, man, I didn't know they were _this_ ugly."

"You know, 'ugly' might be too kind a word…" Sparko backed away from the fountain uncomfortably, finding his way to a nearby bench, where Darrell joined him.

"I guess those guys playing in there don't mind. Though, it does look really fun…" He eventually noticed the faint but palpable energy coursing through the metal bench beneath him, and the slight unease in Sparko's eyes. "What's the matter?" Following his gaze to the fountain, he stood, forming his arm cannon. "You wanna go for a swim and trash the thing?"

"N-No!" Sparko stared past him at the water, as if it were deadly acid instead. "It's just...Can we go somewhere else?"

As Darrell just tilted his head, confused, he sighed. "I'm, uh, weak to water, okay? I short out if I get hit with it. It's like a rock-paper-scissors thing…"

Darrell tilted his head further, almost a full 90 degrees. "Huh, it's different for robots, electric and water are both weak to metal, and metal's weak to itself. I rust really bad sometimes when I get wet though…" Finally, he snapped back, and even screwed his head on a little tighter to be sure it was secure, which got a laugh out of Sparko in spite of his nervousness. "But, it's still a lot of fun! Watch this!"

"WAIT!!"

Darrell jumped right in, knocking the kids out of his way as he splashed around a little in the shallow water, but as he tried to take aim at the gaudy statue above him he lost his balance, plummeting in face-first and completely soaking his costume. He didn't even seem to care though, just laughing as he surfaced again.

He motioned for Sparko to come closer, which the hero did very, very reluctantly. "It's okay, I won't splash you!"

"You're, uh, really wet though."

"I'll be fine!" Carefully he managed to get back onto dry land, though it wasn't dry for long, with a puddle growing at his feet that Sparko eyed suspiciously. "So, wait, can you not even touch water at all? Or drink it?"

"Oh, I can drink it just fine! And little things, like if I'm out in the rain for a few seconds, that's not a problem. Those don't short me out."

Carefully, he dipped one finger into the fountain, which finally satisfied Darrell. "Getting splashed, or...swimming, though? Not happening."

All kinds of questions flowed through Darrell's processor at this new information, and he struggled to pick only one. "So, what do you do when you go to the beach? Just stay on the sand?"

"I've never been to the beach." Darrell's jaw dropped. "My parents did drag me on a cruise with 'em once, even though I mostly just stayed in our cabin and ate those tiny crabcakes they had the whole time..."

"I can't believe you've never been to the beach, it's the funnest thing ever!" He shook his head in disbelief. "And you don't even have to go in the water, you can build sand castles, or play volleyball, or dump trash, or kick sand in some dumb heroes' eyes!"

Sparko just looked at him, worried. "Don't you rust there, though?"

"Well, yeah, I never really... _come back_ from the beach. But my siblings and I go all the time!" 

"…You're sure you're not rusting now, Darrell?"

"Nah, that only happens if it gets inside me, and I think I'm okay!" He wrung out his hat and scarf, taking care that nothing got anywhere near Sparko, though there wasn't much he could do about the rest of his clothes -- while he was nude in public more often than not, the act of taking off clothing he already had on seemed to cause even more problems. "And if anything did get in me, I can just reboot! Though...I guess we should find someplace I can dry off. For you."

Darrell quickly scouted out a public restroom with a hand dryer he could stand in front of for a while, and returned to their bench to some slightly-melted surprise ice cream.

"Geez, I didn't think I took that long!" He hurriedly licked up the dripping ice cream, from both the cone and his hands.

"It's okay, I just...thought of it!" Sparko was still out of breath from flying to the nearest ice cream place and back, but managed a nervous laugh. "I know you like surprises, so I tried to get back before you did!"

"I do like surprises. But, you might have come back _too_ fast," Darrell remarked, giving up on trying to contain the dripping and just slurping up what he could.

"Yeah…" Sparko stared down at his cone for a second, his expression melting as well. "Geez, what do you even see in someone like me, anyway?"

"Hm?"

"I mean…" He sighed. "Tonight was a disaster. Still is. I picked the wrong restaurant, I can't just go jump in fountains with you, the ice cream's melting…I even had _my mom_ drive us!" He glanced over at Darrell, still far overdressed compared to him, and sighed even deeper. It was like he was still stuck in middle school dating mode, and a smart guy would have dropped him for far less...

Darrell couldn't see it, though. "I thought tonight was really fun! It's just like how we usually hang out, it's just, now we're boyfriends instead!" 

With a serious look in his eyes, Sparko rephrased his question. "Darrell…why do you like me?"

"Because you're nice." A strange sadness slipped into Darrell's voice. "Not a lot of villains, or even other heroes, are that nice to me."

Caught completely by surprise, Sparko laughed. "Well, you're nice too! Especially for a villain!" He refused to believe it was really that simple.

"Yeah. I always used to get told that was my problem…" The rest of Darrell's face matched his voice. "But, you're like...the only one who didn't have a problem with me, or...really cared about me, even when I was annoying, and bugging you at work trying to talk to you or do stuff with you all the time. You even wanted to be friends with me!"

"Darrell, you weren't annoying. Honestly, I thought you were...kinda cute, with how excited you got over everything. Guess I just liked seeing you smile!"

At that, he couldn't help but give Sparko another. "You know...for a long time, you were the main reason I ever did. You got me through all the bad stuff that was happening back when I worked at the plaza."

"With my stories about POINT Prep?"

"I really liked those!"

"Did I ever tell you about the time Purrcival and me snuck out to the kitchen for some midnight ice cream and got caught by Greyman, and he not only let us off the hook but grabbed a scoop for himself, and even gave us a few study tips for the next week's exam?"

Darrell gave an exaggerated gasp. "No!" 

"Heh, good, 'cause I think I'm startin' to run out of POINT Prep ones. I might have to start on some from Lakewood High at this rate!"

"Well, I'll listen to those too," Darrell promised, allocating some more space in his hivemind in anticipation. In the process, another memory surfaced, another moment he knew had contributed, possibly more than any other, to the feelings within him, the feelings he decided Sparko had definitely met _his_ expectations to have shared with him. "Also...I guess I never did pay you back for buying me lunch that one time."

"You really never forgot that, huh? Look, if you ask me, you already paid that back, and then some!"

"Really? How'd I do that?" Darrell looked at Sparko quizzically.

"By...well…" Where to even start? Getting him tea two days ago? Taking the full credit for vandalizing Weiner Kabob? Staying in touch even as a villain, and still stopping in to say hi whenever he was sent to attack the plaza? Cheering for him at the plaza tournament, even when he got his butt kicked in the third round? Listening to Sparko vent about POINT Prep, and letting him hear that dumb laugh of his whenever possible? Returning his affections, and actually agreeing to go on a real date with him?

Static crackled along the bench again, harmlessly shocking Darrell a couple times as he finished off his ice cream and tried in vain to wipe up the mess it had left. "You aren't having fun, are you Sparko?"

"I...I am! I'm trying to. It's just…" He sighed. "I wanted so bad for tonight to be...you know, perfect. Even before I asked you I had it all planned out, the perfect restaurant, the surprise ice cream, a movie to see if we still had time…"

"So, you're not having fun because tonight didn't go perfect?" Darrell tapped his fingers together in front of him. "Would it have been more fun if this wasn't our first date, and you weren't so worried about that stuff?"

Sparko hated to admit it, but he nodded, sadly. 

"Well, then what if it wasn't?" Though his metal fingers were too slick to actually snap, Darrell mimed the action anyway. "How about we just pretend this is our tenth date instead, for the rest of the night!"

Sparko dropped the rest of his cone, not even bothering to pick it up. "Darrell, we haven't even finished our first one yet!"

"I said, we'll just pretend. So, since we're on our tenth date, how do you feel now?"

"Um…" Sparko considered his words intensely, trying his best to put himself into that imaginary future date. "I guess I'll feel...a lot less nervous about it all. I'm done tryin' to impress you, and it doesn't matter if anything goes wrong anymore. I know you still like me even if I'm not perfect!" He glanced over at Darrell. "...Right?"

"Of course!"

Sparko sighed in relief. "Also, I've learned by then to let _you_ plan the dates." This got a laugh out of Darrell, who agreed wholeheartedly. 

"You'll really trust me to pick what we do? Even if it's not something hero-y?"

"I mean, don't get us killed or thrown in prison, please! But, anything else...yeah, I'll trust you, Darrell."

He smirked. "Well, then, for our eleventh date, I'm gonna take you to the beach!"

"To the...what?!" 

"You trust me, right?" Darrell smiled reassuringly. "We'll just stay on the sand, way back from the water, so you won't get hurt. I'll show you how much fun it is even if you can't swim!" Sparko still seemed unsure, so Darrell pulled him into a hug, letting the rest of his anxiousness melt away immediately.

Suddenly, Sparko pulled back, staring at Darrell's chest. "Whoa, wait, you're...?" 

Darrell could only snicker at his reaction -- it was almost exactly the same as Fink's the first time he'd hugged her. "What, I didn't feel like you expected?" 

"I thought you'd be, you know, cold!" 

"Pfft, maybe when I first start up in the morning, not when I've been active for 13 and a half hours straight!" He fidgeted a little with his scarf. "Especially not when I'm wearing a costume, and my exhaust vents are blocked!"

"Oh..." A thought ran through Sparko's very, very guilty consciousness: _I wonder how cold he'd be if I woke up next to him_. He buried it right away, scooching closer as he returned back into Darrell's surprisingly-warm embrace, inadvertently wrapping part of his lower body around the robot's ankles, the electricity automatically attracted to the metal only inches away, even through his costume.

It was Darrell's turn to wreck the moment in surprise, as he glanced down at his legs. "I can feel that!"

"Wait, really?" Sparko pulled far enough away to un-stick himself, embarrassed. "I thought you said your legs were completely numb?"

"I can feel you though!" Experimentally, he moved in even closer, letting the other's lightning half wrap tighter, and he smiled as the sensation intensified. "It's kinda buzzy and static-y. I like it."

"Heh, good. 'Cause I don't think I can stop that from happening..." Sparko had never been this close to Darrell before, close enough to accidentally cling to his metal exterior like that, close enough to, well...kiss him.

Would Darrell even want to kiss him back, on only their first date? Then again...it was apparently their tenth already. Sparko decided he would just lean in a little. No harm in it, right? If Darrell took that as an invitation, and leaned in as well, he'd try it out. But if not...oh well, maybe he could try again at the beach?

Darrell noticed the very slight lean. His father's words replayed over and over within his hivemind: _If he starts it...and I want to kiss him…_

Suddenly, he realized he did want to. He surprised Sparko by leaning in as well, locking his artificial lips onto the hero's real ones. Only a second in, though, Darrell just couldn't stop giggling, a tingling sensation in his electrical system getting stronger and stronger from the mouth down, and he desperately pushed Sparko away, kicking his feet to shake him off of his ankles.

"What's wrong?"

"It tickles!" Seeing his boyfriend's concern, though, he kissed Sparko a second time, only a tiny, quick peck. "It doesn't hurt, but I think I should ask my daddy to upgrade my circuits when I get home tonight." 

"Yeah…" Sparko slowly rose from the bench, pulling Darrell up as well. "Speakin' of, even if we're pretending we're on our tenth date, that still means we gotta finish our first one! So, how about we find some dinner and get you home before it gets too late?"

Cursing his internal clock, Darrell agreed, scanning the street for anything that looked promising. "Wait...is that Beardo over there?"

Just down the street was indeed Beardo's truck, with the ogre apparently getting more business downtown than at the plaza lately. Even with trying to reign in his perfectionism, treating his date to dinner on the street from a food truck wasn't Sparko's first choice by a long shot, but there was one pasta dish on the menu, that only seemed too appropriate for the evening. Beardo gave them a knowing look as he prepared their food, refusing a few extra technoes' tip as he mixed a couple drops of imitation galaxy truffle oil into the pasta for free.

"You know," Darrell started, inhaling his entire meal in less than a minute, "now that I think about it, I totally coulda just switched my language settings to Spanish or whatever it was for a few minutes, so I could have ordered for us at that fancy place."

"Don't worry about it! I think we did better." Yeah, Darrell was definitely arranging the dates from then on, Sparko decided, especially when it came to dinner.

Only a too-short bus trip later, they crossed the street to Boxmore, their hands never having separated once the entire time.

"I guess...that's it then," Sparko sighed, reluctant to let go, but as he finally did Darrell caught him.

"Not yet. My daddy's inside, you should totally come in and say hi!"

Sparko just stared at him. "You mean, say hi to the level -10 supervillain who sends you guys to destroy the plaza and the heroes who work there, myself included, every single day? And who's famous for hatin' all heroes and love and friendship?"

"Yeah, that's him! But, you know, he's been a lot nicer lately, and I think he'll really like you." A big grin spread across Darrell's face. "I met your mom, and I didn't meet your dad yet but I'll probably like him too, so I want you to meet my daddy!"

"Darrell...I'm gonna be honest. That sounds like about ten bad ideas, all rolled up into one big, terrible one."

"Oh, come on, you'll be fine!" Tugging on his hand, Darrell pulled him through the door right into the factory, onto the crowded production floor.

Sparko couldn't help but stare up at a Big Darrell as they passed, who in turn smiled as he noticed the tiny hero. "Whoa, who is that?"

Both Darrells giggled at him in unison. "Uh...me?" A few more standard-sized Darrells, lounging around the nearby vending machine after their shift, blushed and waved at their collective boyfriend.

"Wait…" Looking between all of them, including the giant one that had bent down so that both he and the Darrell pilot inside his head could get a better look at him, Sparko gripped his own Darrell's hand tighter. "You're _you,_ though, right? At least, right now?"

"Sparko, I'm a hivemind. All of them are me, all of the time, and that, um, means you're dating all of them too." Granted, the others were mostly running off of his subconscious, and Darrell gulped as he realized one of him was giving Sparko a rather PG-13-rated look, causing him to protectively pull their boyfriend closer. "This isn't weirding you out, is it?"

"...I just hope they're not all comin' with us to see your dad."

"Nah, don't worry!" Sending an order through his hivemind to shoo all of his duplicates away, Darrell pointed to a door at the end of the long catwalk they were on. "Daddy's office is just down that hall, how about I go ahead and let him know you're here?"

Actually, if given a choice in the matter Sparko would rather stay there and see if he could catch a ride on Big Darrell's shoulder, but he agreed, following as the robot hurried through that door and down the hall ahead of him, taking a second to point out the office door before he slipped inside.

Sparko waited there for several minutes, counting the rivets in an artificial potted plant nearby, until Darrell finally stuck his head out again. "Come in, he really wants to see you!" Bracing for the worst, Sparko stuck close to Darrell as he entered to finally meet the supervillain, who still sat behind his desk at the end of the long, foreboding office.

Strangely, though, despite the room's imposing appearance, Lord Boxman's face was the exact opposite, beaming as he took in Darrell's date.

"So this is the hero that swept my little boy off his feet!" Sparko tried to return the expression, though not without noticeable difficulty as he felt a jolt of panic shoot through him.

"Uh...it's n-nice to meet you, Lord Boxman, sir…" Shaking, he held out his hand across the desk, but Boxman clearly had other ideas, hopping right over it and opening his arms wide for a hug.

"Daddy, stop!!" It was too late though, Boxman already had his arms around Sparko, and one massive accidental electric shock later he was on the floor about four feet away, twitching and smoking.

"Oh Cob, Lord Boxman, I'm so sorry!" Sparko frantically tried to assess his injuries from a safe distance, terrified to even touch him again. 

Despite being blackened by the blast, though, Boxman was laughing hysterically, waving Darrell off as his son rushed to his side. "Oh, I once got struck by lightning three times in the same day, this is nothing!" He stood and brushed himself off, opting instead to limit his physical contact to a simple, rough chicken-clawed handshake, as per Sparko's original suggestion.

"You're...sure you're okay? And...y-you don't mind me bein' a hero?"

"Of course, this family's seen stranger things happen!" He gestured out the window behind him towards the plaza. "Why, I'll have you know one of my best friends is a hero! Ooh, which reminds me, I forgot to set up my next haircut appointment…"

Boxman jogged to his desk and made a quick call to Ernesto, then turned back to Sparko, a sharp-toothed grin on his face. "Anyways...welcome to the Boxman family, son! I know I'm not your dad _yet_..." His gaze momentarily shot over to Darrell, who whined anxiously. "...but you can still call me that instead of stuffy old 'Lord Boxman' if you want! No point in waiting until the wedding!"

Sparko's lower half flickered out, and he crashed to the floor, his nerves finally hitting their limit.

"Sparko!" Darrell immediately rushed to try and catch him, gently holding his head and fanning him with his hat, with Boxman looking on as Sparko slowly stirred, to everyone's relief. "Daddy, I told you not to embarrass him…"

\---

Fainting for only a few seconds aside, their first, no, _tenth_ date had ultimately been a success, despite any of Sparko's doubts, and he found himself figuratively as well as literally buzzing in anticipation for their eleventh.

With Darrell's outfit putting him to shame the last time, he hovered in front of a mirror, holding up a few old shirts as he tried to figure out an appropriate look for himself. But, what could he wear to the beach? He'd seen movies set there, with boys his age wearing nothing but swim trunks (or something that left even less to the imagination!) and sandals, but needless to say, that just wasn't going to work for someone like him. A few more failed ideas later he flew out of his room towards the kitchen, or at least, a part of his parents' lab that had at some point been converted into one, with soldering equipment and spare parts shoved between jury-rigged electrical appliances and a VERY well-worn coffee maker. 

"Hey, Dad, what do you think I could I wear to-!!" Seated across from his parents at the kitchen table was a very familiar cyborg, who greeted him almost as enthusiastically as he had the night before, though he thankfully stayed in his seat this time. "Lord Boxman? What the heck are you doin' here!?"

His mother laughed. "Oh don't you worry Sparko, we just ran into him at the grocery store earlier!"

"He actually thought your mother was you, and came up to say hello," Sparko's father, a man wearing the exact same lab coat and gloves as his wife but with much more subdued, softer features, explained. "And once he told us he was Darrell's father, it just didn't seem right not to invite him over for coffee."

To Sparko's horror, there were a bunch of his "baby pictures" spread on the table between them -- different stages of the experiment in which he had accidentally been created, photographed for documentation purposes, as well as a few from when he had only just started to take humanoid form, curling around his very first lightning rod. There were also a couple that Boxman had in a fancy frame, of a very small Darrell wearing an oversized suit jacket, and after a few moments he continued the conversation they'd been having when Sparko had entered. 

"Anyways, Darrell wanted to dress up when we went to church so bad, just like all the other minions there, so he took that thing right out of my closet and wore it for weeks, until I finally gave up and bought him a little suit in his size! And he wore that until I blew the place up and started taking the kids somewhere else." He laughed at the heroes' startled expressions. "Oh, don't worry, they had it coming! Some of the other children there kept looking at me and all the other adults funny, and I know it was a church of Cob but they were _really_ into corn…"

"Oh…" Ignoring most of Boxman's rambling, Sparko's mother chose instead to coo at his photos. "With that jacket, he looks a lot like Sparko did when he went to Plaza Prom! In fact, I got the pictures right here!"

"Mom no!" Just as she pulled a few more photos out from her lab coat Sparko shot across the table, snatching them in midair and hiding them as he frowned at his parents. "Baby pictures are one thing, but we agreed, the prom ones are between us only!"

His father frowned. "Kiddo, we pass those around every single scientific conference we go to, and they love 'em. In fact…" He examined Boxman's face more closely, particularly his mechanical eye. "Do I remember seeing you at the Battleburg Electrical Engineering Panel back in 200X? Weren't you the one who gave that presentation on the use of refined glorbs as power cells?"

"Oh, you were there too? And Sparko's the one who...Oh! You were the one passing around those pictures of him in that cute little lamb costume!"

"Those too?! I swore I burned 'em all!" Sparko flew back to his room, the slam of his door punctuating his parents' betrayal. Both of them sighed, but then his mother's smile returned, as she pulled out her phone. 

"It's okay, he still gets so embarrassed about that, but we keep backups of all his pictures!" She eagerly showed an absolutely overjoyed Boxman the photo.


	7. The Future of Darrell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't joking about the timeskips.
> 
> Also, yes, this is named after one of the "episodes" in Thank You For Watching the Show.

For someone literally made out of living electricity, Sparko found surprising comfort in getting as far off the grid as possible. 

Just like POINT Prep, he'd managed to get into a college a decent distance outside Lakewood's borders, an equal distance both from the plaza and Darrell's new home, meaning it wasn't far either way. Quite often, he found himself wandering out there once classes and work were out of the way, the fresh air and the isolation and the absolute  _ quiet  _ doing wonders for his anxiety, and of course, his boyfriend's always-waiting arms didn't hurt either. 

And if the chance to relax at the newly-christened Darrell Acres whenever Sparko got a chance wasn't great enough, on that particular evening lightning flashed overhead, with thunder rumbling across the whole area only a second after -- the storm was pretty much on top of them, and the air was absolutely saturated with electric charge. It was almost too tempting to dart out from under the covered porch for a quick rainy flight, as his energy level soared, but he settled for lounging right above the floorboards, watching the pouring rain and lightning from a safe, dry distance. That wish KO mentioned he had made, about everyone getting to live their "best lives," must have finally started to kick in for him; there was no other explanation for how things had turned out so perfect.

Well, almost perfect. On the other side of the porch, Darrell stomped one of his cowboy boots in frustration, as two steady streams of rainwater dripped down in front of him. "I just fixed that leak last time it rained, and now there's two of 'em?!"

Whoever Great-Great-Uncle Boxman was, he certainly didn't seem to care for the place he'd left Lord Boxman and the robots in his will, and the entire farm had been an absolute wreck when Darrell first decided to take the opportunity to get away from the factory and all of the painful memories associated with it, and make a fresh start. But, with time, he'd cleared out the trash, and the weeds, and that one mutant raccoon nest in the attic, and now only minor complaints remained, that he still couldn't help but give almost every bit of his attention.

"Darrell, you've been workin' nonstop on this place for two months! Just...let this one go for a while." Sparko patted a spot on the floor next to him, which Darrell finally dropped into, pulling him close. 

"At least the rain's good for my crops," he mused, looking out approvingly at a few small, hand-plowed and planted vegetable patches close to the house -- he'd started on them long before he'd even moved in, at the beginning of the season, and even to his inexperienced eye the leaves and stems that bobbed in the rain almost looked ready to harvest. "You're not gonna try and fly back to your dorm in all this, right?"

"Oh, there's no way!" Even the charged air and occasional flash of lightning didn't make the weather any less dreary, or the rain any less uncomfortable for Sparko. "I'll probably stay here tonight, and just leave early for class tomorrow."

Darrell smiled, and gently kissed him. "Why don't I get dinner started, then? You can watch the storm for a little longer."

"It's okay, I can help!" As Darrell stood and tried to leave Sparko clung to him, pleading. "Come on, if we're movin' in together for reals once I graduate, I wanna prove I can take care of you first!"

"Sparko…" Darrell responded with a weary look. "I just rebuilt the kitchen after that…'accident' you had when you were trying to make a grilled cheese. Let's leave the proving stuff to me for a while, okay?"

"...In my defense, those pans were  _ supposed _ to be nonstick." He sighed; Darrell still insisted that it wasn't a big deal, that he could borrow more than enough help from Boxmore to fix it, but the incident had still set renovations of the old farmhouse back by three whole days, and even worse, it had spelled the end of Sparko being permitted to do  _ anything _ around the farm, with Darrell taking all the work on himself. It was exhausting to even watch.

"...Okay. I'll let you handle it tonight."

Another kiss later, Darrell ducked inside, taking in the home he'd at least started to build for himself. It wasn't much, just a living room with a couch and a TV and a few Boxmore-branded cardboard boxes that doubled as tables, an outdated kitchen that still had a few stubborn scorch marks along the cabinets, and one bedroom, with one bed, that he shared with Sparko every weekend, and whenever he accidentally studied too late or the weather turned sour like on that particular night. 

It wasn't much, but it was all he needed for now.

He rifled through those burnt cabinets, coming up empty -- nothing except a few boxes of nails and screws, a can of oil, and a half-empty package of animal crackers that had expired about three years prior. All perfectly fine for a robot like Darrell, and in fact he helped himself to a few of those stale, slightly-moldy crackers right there, but nothing Sparko could safely eat.

_ Wait a second, I own a farm! I MAKE food! _ Darrell bolted back outside, barely paying the storm any mind as he examined his vegetables closely, trying to guess which ones were the most ready to eat. Eventually the rain clattering against his metal outer shell stopped, and he looked up to see his boyfriend huddled close, holding an umbrella over both of them with a tired smile.

"You know, I could just order a pizza!"

"Sparko..." Darrell tossed him a ripe cucumber, digging a couple of carrots and potatoes out of the mud. "I've still got this! Come on, you're getting wet." 

"It's not too bad yet!" With dinner acquired, the two hurried back out of the rain. "Now, how 'bout I help you out with the rest of this?"

"I'll let you watch. How's that?" Tossing the drenched umbrella aside, Darrell led Sparko inside, even holding the door open for him to his silent disappointment.

While his boyfriend got dinner started Sparko pulled out one of his textbooks at the table, periodically glancing up from his reading to watch lightning flash outside the window he sat across from.

"Geez, you don't have even more homework, do you?" Darrell wasn't sure exactly how to cook the vegetables he'd gathered yet, but tried his best, boiling the whole, unpeeled potatoes and carrots, with the greens still attached, in a big pot with some bolts, and laying out cucumber slices onto a baking sheet to put in the oven.

"Nah, exams are next week. And even though it's my first semester, I'm already feelin' the heat a little..."

"Oh, sorry." Darrell turned down the dial on the stove, prompting a strange look from his boyfriend, but Sparko didn't comment further. "Hey, I'm visiting Boxmore tomorrow, why don't you come with me once you're off work and I can help you study?"

Sparko almost groaned at the way Darrell worded his offer. "I wouldn't mind studyin'  _ with  _ you. Together. Deal?"

"Deal!"

\---

The red robot certainly wasn't a common sight at the plaza anymore, especially not in the full cowboy getup he'd elected to wear, but the customers' stares didn't bother him in the slightest. In fact, he barely even noticed the long, angry line behind him, his eye solely focused on the bodega cashier's smile.

"Aww, you shouldn't have, Darrell!" Sparko took a few seconds to examine the old, slightly-rusty Lord of the Loot lunch box that the robot had shoved into his hands. "No, really, you shouldn't have. I work here, I can just grab a hot dog when I'm hungry!"

"Sparko, I worked here too, remember? I KNOW how 'fresh' those hot dogs are." Despite not even having the capability to do so, Darrell almost felt nauseous from the thought. "Besides, your mom thought me making you lunch was cute, when I swung by the lab on the way here!"

"What were you doing at my parents' lab?"

"Oh, no reason, just to say hi…" Laying his hands on his hips, Darrell stared him down. "Anyways, I'm not leaving until you promise me you'll try it!"

Somewhere behind Darrell, an impatient customer cried out, "For the love of Cob promise him already!"

"Okay, okay!" Sparko tucked the lunch box under his counter. "Babe, I promise. I'll have...whatever this is for lunch!" He flashed a nervous grin up at him, blowing one last kiss as Darrell finally dashed across the street to Boxmore, leaving him to get to work.

Along the way, Darrell craned his neck to look up at the big sign out front, the red text on its lower screen reading "CLEARANCE SALE!! 75% off all Darrells and accessories!" The last time they'd discounted him that much was when Boxman had accidentally ordered 2000 cases of his and Ernesto's dull red robot eyes instead of 200, and the factory was overstocked on both models for months.

It felt strange to enter Boxmore through the customer entrance, but right away he was greeted by a familiar face at a nearby desk, who hurried to finalize a customer's order over the phone and hang up to give his brother his full attention.

"Ernesto, you're back in sales?!"

"It's just temporary," the big robot replied, audibly smiling. "Raymond was a little overloaded taking over the assembly lines from you, so I stepped in to help him out."

Quickly, Ernesto made one additional call to Lord Boxman to inform him of Darrell's arrival, while he curiously checked out the remaining stock. The shelves were almost bare, and the few Darrells that remained all had minor to major manufacturing defects -- scratched paint, dulled claws, missing screws or pieces of metal plating, and one rather unsettling one that had somehow gotten an extra eye installed.

"These are probably getting scrapped tonight, so we can end this promotion already," Ernesto said sadly as he rejoined his younger brother. "Even though sales on your model were down for months, a few of our customers aren't happy with the decision to discontinue you at all! We get tons of comments on every Social Media post we make asking us to bring you back, or demanding to know why we don't mention you anymore when we still sometimes bring up the junkfish, even after I announced that we're pushing Mikayla's new compact model and Jethro's...ahem…'Deathro' configuration instead. Really, the faster we get you out of our catalogs and our customers' memory the better." He tapped his fingers together, worriedly peering over at Darrell. "No offense, though."

"It's okay, I know what you meant!" Darrell gently patted his shoulder. "I'm just sorry you guys all ended up having to work harder because of me quitting."

"We can handle it, don't worry! It's just...business as usual." Ernesto chuckled. "In that there IS no usual here at Boxmore!"

"You said it!" 

The elder Boxbot brothers high-fived, before Ernesto motioned to the doors that led further into the factory. "Come on, Lord Boxman wanted to show you something inside. He's probably waiting."

They passed over the assembly floor, allowing Darrell a moment to wave down to his other siblings, and halfway to Lord Boxman's office the cyborg rushed to meet him, barely giving his son time to process his arrival before jumping right into a tight embrace.

"There's my little cowboy!" He had to practically stand on his toes to even look into Darrell's eye anymore, his new robo-adult model dwarfing him even more than his robo-teen model had. "Sorry, my  _ big _ cowboy! So, how's being, you know...not here?"

"It's going great, Daddy! I think the farm will even be ready for you to visit soon!"

"Oh, I can't wait! I'll even bring some of my muffins for you and Sparko!" Boxman's face suddenly dropped, his organic eye moistening. "You know, it already feels so different around here without you. I still can't believe we actually discontinued you, Darrell…"

Darrell sighed. "Daddy, it was my choice, being a mindless robotic slave wasn't my best life. It was the right time for me to move on!"

"I know. I'm sorry, Darrell. It's just...It's hard on a parent, when one of their kids is all grown up, and able to make all these big decisions about their future on their own!"

Behind them, Ernesto rolled his eye. "You don't say, Lord Boxman…" The two ignored him, though, as Boxman led them both down the hall, a few doors past Darrell's old bedroom.

"Now, I remember you were worried about if you needed to reboot, so we did keep a few extras!" He opened the door, revealing rows upon rows of deactivated Darrells, all fully-upgraded and packed tightly to fill almost every square inch of space. "I don't suggest going too crazy with rebooting yourself like you used to, but if for whatever reason you get destroyed out on the farm, your hivemind will still kick in and automatically start up one of these, and you can just come on out and say hi!"

"Thanks, Daddy, this is perfect!"

"And we'll keep your room like it was too, so if you ever do want to take a break and spend time here, you're more than welcome! Boxmore will always be your home, even when...you know. I'm not around anymore."

"Aw, don't say that! You're always gonna be here!" Darrell hugged him, smiling, not noticing the barely-disguised unease on his father's face.

"Yeah, I sure will be…"

Across the street, meanwhile, lunch finally rolled around, and for several minutes Sparko stared suspiciously at the box as it sat in front of him on the break room table.

"Are you gonna open it?" KO leaned over his older but now shorter coworker's shoulder, eyeing the thing in a much more curious manner. 

"You know...I'm kinda scared to." Thousands of possibilities raced through his mind, most of which involved either metal, charcoal, or worst of all, more of those astoundingly terrible baked cucumbers. Things that logically might come out of a robot's kitchen. "But, I did make a promise."

He opened the lunch box, fearing the worst, and pulled out nothing more than an entire head of raw cabbage and a handwritten note.

"Hi Sparko!

I havested all my crops so Ive got more than enuf for you to eat now! Hop you like it!!

Love, Darrell"

Sparko glanced between the note and the cabbage several times, still reeling from the fact that it was actually something edible. In theory.

"Wow, Darrell really wants you to eat your vegetals, huh?"

"I...guess?" He wasn't even sure if he could eat the thing, despite his promise. Cabbage had never been Sparko's favorite, especially not straight off the ground, but he still hesitantly pulled off a single large leaf and, even more hesitantly, stuffed it into his mouth, forcing himself to swallow. "It's actually not that bad."

KO laughed. "That's great!" But, as Sparko silently kept staring at the cabbage, unwilling to take a second bite, the teenager sighed, pulling a few technoes out of his pocket. "You wanna just split a pizza?"

"Yes, please." Sparko tucked the cabbage back into his lunch box. At the very least, he had tried it, so his promise to Darrell didn't go unfulfilled. Just as KO was about to dial the closest pizza place, though, Sparko caught him. "Hey, can you get some spinach and mushrooms on my half?" If Darrell wanted him to eat his "vegetals," how could he refuse?

\---

"Torque is...rotational force, right?"

Darrell flipped the card over. "Yeah, it is! Man, you got  _ all _ of them right so far."

Sparko grinned, though not without some disappointment, turning back to the physics textbook opened in front of him. He laid on his stomach on a large rug Darrell's old bedroom, occasionally looking up from his reading to trace the simple roads and labelled buildings it depicted -- the thing matched the one he'd had in his own bedroom when he was 2-5 years old. "Well, this is the fifth time we've gone through the deck. Think I'm just memorizin' it all at this point!"

"Well, isn't that a good thing?" Darrell laid right next to him in the same position, the head of cabbage from earlier in his hand. It hadn't lasted long -- some of the withered outer leaves were turning yellow and even brown along the edges, and a few flies had somehow found their way in to try and get to it. Yet, in spite of this, the robot periodically chomped right into the thing like it was a fresh apple.

"I want to  _ understand _ it all, though, not just remember the terms." Sparko wrinkled his nose in disgust as his boyfriend took yet another bite. "Also, just curious, is there any food you  _ can't _ handle?"

"Marshmallows."

He honestly hadn't expected much of an answer at all, given what he'd seen so far of Darrell's unusual eating habits, much less an answer so quick and so specific. "You...can't eat marshmallows?"

"I can eat 'em, I just gotta reboot right after." He shrugged. "I guess it's an 'allergy'? Kind of? They stick to the inside of my robo-guts and clog me up really bad."

Sparko laughed. "Man, if only dealing with food allergies were as easy as a reboot!" He realized he hadn't been concentrating at all on his textbook, and backed up several paragraphs, with Darrell still rereading the first one over his shoulder as he threw the flashcards down.

"Ugh, I just don't get how you understand any of this stuff..." The robot finished off the last of his "snack" and nonchalantly crawled onto his old racecar bed, removing his cowboy hat to keep from smushing it against the pillows.

"I thought you were helpin' me study?"

Darrell made an exaggerated yawn. "Sparko, you got this, trust me. There's no way you're gonna fail your exams at this rate!"

"Yeah, but…" Sparko stopped himself; failing was always a possibility, sure, but there wasn't much point in arguing. Instead he carried the textbook up onto the bed with Darrell, passing it to him while he got comfortable as well.

"What's this for?"

"I'm takin' a break too. So…" He wrapped his arms around Darrell's waist, making it clear he wasn't taking the book back when it was offered. "How about I help  _ you _ study for a little while?"

Darrell raced for an excuse. "But I'm not the one in school! I don't have to learn anything!"

"So? It never hurts." Sparko motioned towards the first paragraph on the page. "Why don't you read it to me?"

"Okay…" Darrell rolled his eye, and started to read aloud, as Sparko followed along from his spot on Darrell's chest. "The second law concerns the relationship between mass and...acer...acceler..."

"Acceleration."

"Oh, yeah! Acceleration!" Darrell paused. "Wait, what's that again? I remember it has somethin' to do with cars..."

"It's the change in speed something has." Sparko patiently smiled up at him. "So, like, for a car, if it goes from 10 to 60, its acceleration would be 50."

He stared up at Darrell's exposed braincase, as the robot considered the explanation, the gears somewhere in his head clearly turning as he started to understand. Sparko hadn't ever actually seen anything interesting happen in there beyond the occasional tiny air bubbles suspended in the liquid within, certainly never a visible spark of activity along the folds of the robot's artificial brain, but he still never gave up hope of catching such a sight. 

He sometimes wished he would give up his hat more often, to let Sparko get a better view.

Darrell didn't pay his boyfriend much attention, though, and continued on to the next sentence. "This relationship can be exper...expressed in the form of...and then there's some math." He frowned at the equation on the page, which made Sparko giggle.

"You read that as 'Force equals Mass times Acceleration,'" he explained, pointing out each of the symbols as he defined them. 

"I don't understand what that means at all."

"Well…" Sparko thought for a moment. "Let's say you're still working down there in the factory, and you have this really really big box that you gotta use a lot of force to push where you need it, and just one Darrell isn't gonna cut it. How would you deal with that?"

"Uh...I'd probably get another me to help move it. Or upgrade to a big Darrell, so I can just pick it up with one hand!" Sparko blushed a little at that image, and as Not-Big Darrell flexed his nonexistent muscles next to him, but continued anyway.

"Well, good! That's increasing your mass, which increases force! You could probably also try getting a running start, and slamming yourself into it. I've seen some of you do that down there a couple times!" 

"Yeah, hehe…" He blinked. "Wait, that's increasing acceleration, isn't it? Since if I'm running toward the box, I'm changing the speed I'm going when I push it!

Sparko smiled, proudly. "Exactly! And since force uses both of those, mass and acceleration, using more of either one will give you a better result!" Sure, it wasn't written that way in his textbook, but Sparko would definitely try to remember it like that during his exam, especially the Big Darrell part.

"I guess it isn't so hard to understand!" Darrell held him tighter, smiling, while Sparko glanced up again at his braincase, wondering if that analogy had found its place in there somewhere too. "You know...you're actually a really good teacher."

"And you're a lot smarter than you think, Darrell. Or, at least, a really quick learner." He gently kissed him, not really bothered by the taste of rotten cabbage and motor oil still on the robot's lips. There was a sweetness there that overcame even that taste -- Sparko tried not to think about the glorb just inches away inside Darrell, whose energy coursed through his electrical system. There was obviously more to his love for him than that, so much more, though he couldn't deny that it made making out with him feel  _ really _ good.

Darrell set the textbook aside and pulled Sparko right on top of him, which wasn't hard given how light he was, and kissed him even more passionately. "You think I could do okay if I went to college too?" He giggled as a few sparks from the other's tongue, and from fingertips that had somehow slipped out of their gloves and into his shirt, found their way into his systems, tickling as they fried a couple of nonessential circuits -- those were easy enough to replace, and so worth it.

"You'd do great…with a little studying of course!" Sparko suddenly pulled back, as he realized his body had started glowing with a slight green tint. "Shoot, speakin' of, maybe we should get back to that?"

"Oh, yeah…" Darrell shook out a few flickers of pink in his eye and in the gems on his hands, forcing a quick refresh of his hivemind to be safe. His face retained the hue, though, as Sparko hesitated, still floating over him with his electric half unconsciously wrapped tightly around one of the robot's legs.

"HOWDY BABIES!" Lord Boxman barely knocked a couple of times before barging right in, just as all parents are required to do whenever their child and his boyfriend are on the bed in a compromising position. He looked at the scene for only a second, before slamming his claws over his eyes and turning away. "I'll, uh, just assume you two don't need any more snacks." Darrell noticed a tray of muffins in his other hand, as he finally pushed Sparko off.

"No, no, Daddy, it's fine! We were just, um, taking a break!"

Boxman paused, respectfully keeping his back to them. "Well, when you're done...can I talk to you out here for a second, Sparko?"

"S-Sure!" Slowly, he flew out into the hallway, leaving Darrell to recollect himself, and followed Boxman back to the kitchen, where he placed the muffin tray between them at the table.

"So, uh…" Boxman nervously tapped his fingers together. "How's the studying going? You know, breaks aside."

"Not bad..." Sparko forced himself to finish the muffin he'd taken to munch on on the way; not because it was particularly good, especially since he was pretty sure he tasted salt rather than sugar in it, but more just to be polite. "It's, uh, Physics 101, not really anything too tough yet."

"Oh, that...used to be one of my favorite subjects, actually! I took a lot of mechanical physics and engineering when I was in school myself. And...electrical engineering."

Sparko gulped, already determining the worst possible direction this conversation might be headed.

"Lord Boxman, I know that looked...like  _ that, _ but that is not what we were doing at all!" They saved  _ that _ for Darrell Acres! 

"Look, I'm not trying to embarrass you, Sparko! I know all too well how college study sessions tend to get...derailed. You should have seen how many dates my roommate Albert used to sneak in back at evil engineering school, with that fancy eyebrow wiggle he used to do!" Boxman blushed, just as red as Darrell's outer casing, and cleared his throat. "It's just that...Darrell is my son, okay? And he's the other robots' brother, and we all love him just as much as you do." His face took on a much more serious expression. "I just...want you to keep that in mind, now that he's got his own place, and is spending more time with you than with the rest of us. We all want to be sure that he's in good hands, and that he's happy and safe, especially when...when I'm not around."

Sparko held up his hands, aghast. "I wouldn't even think of hurtin' him! I promise!"

"Okay, good. That's all I wanted to hear." He reached over and patted Sparko's shoulder with his chicken claw. "I know you wouldn't do anything like that, but as Darrell's father I still just want to hear it out loud, that you'll be a good partner to him." The cyborg uncomfortably glanced across the kitchen at a crude family portrait that one of the robots had stuck to the fridge a very long time ago, with an extra daddy and an extra little stepsister added to their number, but then smiled, sadly. "Sparko, there's something I wanted to bring up to you. And I haven't told this to any of the kids yet, so I would appreciate if you'd keep this between us for now."

"Oh, uh…sure." 

Boxman took a deep breath before he continued. "I'll be...moving on, soon, from running this place. Retiring. Darrell moving out kind of gave me the idea. I always did like camping out in the woods, so I was thinking about passing the factory down to the robots and getting a cabin out there, or something. Anyways..."

Realizing he was just rambling at this point, he tried to get back on topic. "I know my kids are all smart, and they can handle themselves, Cob knows they've done it before! But...the rest all have each other, so I do worry sometimes about Darrell out there on his own, with no one but you keeping an eye on him." 

Even without being asked an actual question this time, Sparko knew what to say. "I'll take care of him. I promise, again." He had absolutely no idea how he was going to make good on that promise, but Boxman looked up at him, proud. "You might wanna run that by Darrell, though. Seems like he's got the opposite idea..."

"Oh, Darrell's not hard to deal with! You just tell him what you want from him, raise your voice a little and put your foot down…" His organic eye drifted downward, and he cleared his throat again. "...you know, metaphorically. You gotta remember, he's programmed to serve, and to work almost constantly, and I'm not saying to abuse that, but...don't be afraid to give him an order here and there. He might need a little guidance, now that he doesn't have his family to help with that anymore."

Boxman got up from the table and stretched, taking a muffin for himself and greedily scarfing it down, miraculously only gagging once. "Alright, I won't keep you here any longer. Are you sure you kids don't need any more snacks, or maybe something to drink?"

"We're good on snacks..." Sparko still had that awful muffin taste in his mouth, though, and searched the kitchen for something that might get it out.

Back in his room, Darrell leaned in towards the full-length mirror he used to use for trying on costumes, examining his braincase closely -- did Sparko really think he wouldn't notice him staring at it that entire time? He...did know it was just a prop, right? That the robot's real brain was in the basement, surrounded by other computers and networking equipment...right?

"He actually likes me for my brain." It was the first time Darrell could even say that as something other than a joke, and he couldn't help but chuckle at the thought, but jumped as the door suddenly opened again behind him. Though, to his relief, the mirror reflected his boyfriend entering rather than his father again. 

Sparko passed him a mug of hot chocolate, with all the marshmallows carefully picked out, and took a quick sip of his own, which had twice as many marshmallows as usual. He winked as he realized what Darrell had been doing in front of the mirror. "Checkin' out how big that brain's gettin' with all the studying we're doing tonight?" Oh Cob, he  _ didn't _ know it was just a prop! 

"Uh...Y-Yeah! I think it is getting bigger!" Darrell just smiled at him, as the two laid back onto the floor with their drinks and textbooks. If Sparko actually liked his brain the way he thought it was, he may as well not argue. "Wait, do organic brains really get bigger when you learn stuff?"

"No, not really." Sparko flipped a few pages in his book, frowning. "Still one more chapter to go over, this one's all about conservation of mass and energy! Not as exciting as the last one, just a heads-up."

"I'll be okay," Darrell reassured him, leaning in close to read over his shoulder again. "Daddy didn't get mad at you, did he?"

"No, no, we just...talked college stuff. And ate some of those muffins." Shoot, he forgot to bring Darrell one! But, the robot seemed more than content with his hot chocolate anyway, as he quickly drained his mug.

"Good." Darrell sighed in relief. "I'm glad my dad likes you, Sparko. So, uh...what's this conversation of mass stuff? Does mass talk to each other?"

"...I'll get the next flashcard deck."

\---

"Well? How'd you do?"

Pulling his electric half up onto the couch next to him so he could more easily relax against Darrell's shoulder, Sparko pulled out his physics exam, the big, bright red 100% across the top of its first page easily catching the robot's eye.

Darrell playfully elbowed him. "And you thought you were gonna fail!"

"I...really did." Laughing nervously, Sparko handed it off. "You know how I get over exams!"

Amusingly, as Darrell scanned over Sparko's answers, he noticed one had a roughly-scribbled diagram underneath of a big, buff, one-eyed robot pushing a box, illustrating an increase in mass and force. His professor had even given him a bonus point for it, not that Sparko actually needed any help to get that perfect score.

"I know you do, Sparko, I just don't get why! You're the smartest person I know...well, maybe tied with my daddy." Darrell sat the exam aside and stood, letting his boyfriend softly flop down into his seat with a disappointed groan. "You know what, I had a surprise I was gonna make you for dinner no matter what grade you got, but I really think you earned it! So, wait here until it's done!"

"Darrell…" Sparko took a deep breath, gripping the robot's arm tight so that he couldn't escape. "Do not just run into the kitchen to do everything and leave me behind again. I can help you out!"

Darrell grimaced, eventually pulling free. "Look, I got an actual recipe to try this time, so it'll be fine!" Sparko didn't let up, attempting to follow him into the kitchen anyway, but his boyfriend held firm at the doorway. "Stay out here and don't look. Okay?"

Turning as he heard pans clattering inside, Sparko sighed, defeated. "Can you at least tell me what's for dinner?"

"I told you, it's a surprise! I don't want you knowing what it is until it's done!"

He leaned against the doorjamb, listening closely as the sounds turned from clattering to sizzling, and an unmistakable smell drifted out to him. "Darrell, you're makin' me a grilled cheese."

From inside the kitchen, he heard Darrell's spatula drop to the floor, and the robot scramble to recover it before poking his head back out. 

"How the heck did you know that?!"

Sparko just shrugged. "You did say I was the smartest guy you knew!" He pointed to his nose, prompting Darrell to glance down at where his own would have been. 

"Okay, fine! But, that's not the only surprise!" Finally letting Sparko into the kitchen, he rushed back to the pan just in time to save the sandwich from burning, transferring it onto a plate with a selection of properly-cooked vegetables to serve as he started on his own.

"You don't have to wait on me, Sparko," Darrell remarked as he hesitated to start eating. "I wanna know how I did this time!"

"Darrell, I know you did fine! It's pretty hard to screw up a grilled cheese!" He laughed, pushing down the memory of his own rather catastrophic failure as he finally noticed the cute dinosaur stickers Darrell had used to cover the burn marks on the cabinets. But, at his boyfriend's insistence, Sparko took a bite, and his eyes widened in surprise as his teeth hit something other than just melted cheese in the middle.

"How did you know I like tomatoes in 'em?!" He wracked his brain trying to recall when he'd ever mentioned it, as Darrell just smiled. 

"Your mom told me. She said she used to make those for you a lot when you were little!" He slipped a thick tomato slice into his own sandwich before flipping it. "And your dad showed me how to make the vegetables, I didn't even know that's what spices were for! I always thought they were just for decoration."

"So that's what you were doing at my parents' the other day…" The vegetables were indeed seasoned exactly like his father used to do, and Sparko found himself cleaning his plate before Darrell even had a chance to sit down and try it for himself. "You know, if you wanted to know what I like, all you had to do was ask me!"

"But then it wouldn't have been a surprise…" Darrell's sense of taste barely functioned most of the time, especially with a tongue made of rubber, but as he tried the food it met his approval as well. "Besides, they didn't mind! I think your parents really like me too, and they...wanted me to take care of you for them."

"They...did?" 

"Yeah!" There was a slightly uneasy smile on Darrell's face, as he pushed his own doubts aside. "Sparko, this place isn't just for me, I want to make you happy too! I want our home to be perfect!"

Sparko shot him a serious look. "Darrell, it's not that I don't like you doing all of this, but you can't just do everything yourself, you gotta let me pitch in a little! So…" 

He pushed the empty plate aside, leaning onto the table. "Once this semester's over, I'm moving in with you. Full time. And I'm gonna figure out how to help you fix this place up, and let you take it easy and just...farm!"

Darrell's jaw dropped, and he stared at Sparko, heartbroken. "You...You're dropping out of school?!"

"No, I'm not droppin' out, not this time. My new major's got a lot of classes I can just do online, and I'm gonna try to get Mr Gar to give me a raise, so I don't have to work as many hours at the bodega!"

"Sparko, you don't need to do this..."

"I know I don't. And you know what, I don't really care!" Sending a few sparks across the kitchen, he rose into the air, pointing down at Darrell. "Darrell, I want to do this, and I...I order you to let me help you!"

Darrell stared up in surprise at the display, and he suddenly snickered, making Sparko's shoulders drop.

"What? Did I do it wrong?"

"You don't have to order me," Darrell reassured him, though internally he marveled at just how much his father had rubbed off on Sparko already. "If you really feel that way, I'll back off a little, and give you some chores to do too. And I guess I could use some more time to focus on farm stuff anyway, since I harvested all my crops, but I still don't really know what to do with them all yet…" His gaze drifted over to a pile of boxes in the corner, each filled with vegetables already sadly past their prime and that would soon be little more than compost. Darrell truly impressed himself with just how easily he'd been able to grasp the fundamentals of his new job, but the steps beyond the fundamentals, the ones that connected farming and turning a profit from it, were a problem, to say the least. "Though, maybe dinner should still be my job, okay?"

"Darrell, you keep cooking like that, and you can  _ have _ dinner! I'll even see if my parents have some more recipes they can pass on!" Sparko sadly looked to his empty plate again. "You got any more of those vegetables?"

"Please. I'm a farmer, I MAKE vegetables." He motioned to the boxes again. "And maybe even more, once I figure out what that is!"

Sparko opted for the already-cooked food on the stove instead, grabbing a second plate. "You know, Darrell, if you wanna learn something, you could always go to college with me? I bet there's ways you could test in, even though you never went to school!"

The robot scoffed. "What would I learn there, math? What am I gonna do with math on a farm?"

"They've got classes about startin' a business, and farms are businesses, right? You could just take a few during the off-season, enough to get started, and go from there!"

He gulped -- sure, those would probably fill in the gaps in his knowledge, and business was something he knew he could do, but after years of watching Sparko stress over exams and homework, school was an entirely different story. "Do you...really think I could handle it? I'm not as smart as you, Sparko..."

"I know you could!" In between bites, Sparko reached across the table to take his hand, running a weak current over Darrell's claws and making him giggle a little as it tickled the wiring inside. "Hard part is gettin' accepted, but I can definitely help you get through it, and then we can study together, for both of us this time!"

Remembering their study session at Boxmore, as well as how easily they'd gotten sidetracked, Darrell blushed. He wasn't sure how much he'd actually learn that way, but he couldn't wait.

\---

From several feet above the roof, Sparko took in the entire week's handiwork -- he couldn't even try to match Darrell's pace, but having no issues climbing up or down nor any risk of losing his balance and falling off made replacing the farmhouse's old, rotten shingles an ideal job for him, and even that stubborn leak above the porch that Darrell just couldn't fix turned out not to be that complicated after all from a different angle.

Just over the roof's edge, though, he caught a glimpse of red metal shining in the sunlight, and lowered himself to get a closer view as Darrell tugged a large hose around behind the house, running it from a Boxmore-labelled steel barrel to an inflatable kiddie pool, which quickly filled with a clear liquid that he suspected  _ wasn't _ water.

"What are you doing?"

Darrell looked up at Sparko, and smiled. "I figured we could both use a break and have some fun after all that hard work, so I got us a pool!"

Sparko just had to laugh, as he realized his boyfriend was setting it all up in a pair of green swim trunks and flippers, as well as a snorkel despite the sides of the pool not even making it up to the robot's chest plating, and that a few foam noodles and an inflatable inner tube littered the yard around him. "Uh...that's great! Except you remember I don't swim, right?"

"Oh, you don't have to worry about this stuff, it won't hurt you at all!" Darrell motioned for him to come closer towards the filled pool, as he shut off the flow of mystery liquid. He excitedly slipped his claws in, testing the temperature, and finding it satisfactory he smiled wide. "Go on, try it!"

Extremely hesitantly, Sparko started to dip a finger in, but Darrell stopped him. "Without the gloves."

"The gloves stay on."

"Just trust me." Sighing, Sparko pulled off his gloves and stuck his bare hand into the substance, with his eyes shut tight in anticipation of the usual stinging sensation water gave him.

Instead, though, he pulled it right out, trying desperately to shake the liquid off as it refused to simply drip away. The stuff didn't sting at all, in fact it felt strange as the static on his skin almost completely disappeared, but it was warm, and greasy. Nothing good ever came of immersing oneself in something warm and greasy. "Okay, that is NOT happening! What the heck is that stuff?"

"It's mineral oil! We used to swim in it all the time back at Boxmore, once a month we'd drain one of the toxic waste vats to fill up with it!" Darrell neglected to add that this technically also doubled as his monthly bath, figuring Sparko already had enough on his plate adjusting to life with a robot -- their first few mornings sharing a bathroom already haunted him. "It doesn't conduct electricity or rust metal, so it's safer than water for me, and I thought it might be good for you too!"

While he stepped into the pool and experimentally splashed around a little, letting it seep into his casing and harmlessly flood his systems, Sparko stared at him, uneasy. "Darrell, this is a robot thing. And for the 857th time, I'm not a robot!"

"859th. But you barely even tried it, though! Take off your shirt and come on in, the oil's great!"

"Oh no, the shirt stays on too." Sparko crossed his arms, defiant. "For me, that would be skinny dipping, and you  _ know _ I'm not comfortable doin' that outside!"

"Suit yourself," Darrell replied, snatching his wrist and pulling him right in with no other warning. Sparko yelped as his lightning half found no air underneath him to ionize and switched right off, and he lost all flight capability, and though thankfully Darrell held him up so that none of it got into his nose or mouth a couple of  _ other _ orifices were immediately invaded by the nasty substance.

"DUDE!! Not cool!" Sparko shuddered at the completely alien feeling of being partially submerged, but to his surprise, he did begin to feel strangely relaxed, the warm oil nullifying his natural charge and soothing his sore muscles as he got used to it. "So, you do this every month?"

Darrell grinned at him. "If you like it, I bet we could do it more often! I just gotta order more from Boxmore…" Carefully, he let his boyfriend go, amazed as both of them realized, for the first time in Sparko's life, that he was actually buoyant. "So, you done studying for that History of Heroism exam next week?"

Leaning against the side of the pool and taking in the peaceful silence of his new home, and the wide open sky above him, Sparko shook his head, smiling. "I'll do it later. You good on your Evil Economics 101 studying?"

With a nasally laugh, Darrell echoed him, "I'll do it later." He finally dove under the surface of the shallow oil as best he could, giving his snorkel some miniscule use, while Sparko grabbed that inner tube to hang onto as he lazily floated around a little, letting whatever current his boyfriend generated carry him around.


	8. The Future of Sparko

"Sparko! My darling!" Darrell rushed for his beloved as soon as he opened the door, launching himself into a quick hug and smiling wide. "You're finally home!"

"Oh, hey Darrell. I...take it this morning's been...interesting?" Sparko blushed, setting down a heavy tote bag as the robot pulled him close, almost cradling him in his arms.

"Oh, no, it's been so  _ boring _ without you here!" He lovingly nuzzled Sparko with his cheek, carrying him to the couch where they could cuddle more easily. "I missed you so much, my love, all I could do was sit here and wait for you to come back and be with me…"

"Uh...Okay."

"And now you're here, and I'm so happy!" Darrell leaned in for a long-overdue kiss, which Sparko for some reason redirected from his lips to his forehead.

"Darrell, baby, I missed you too! Just, hold still for me a second." He swooned as Sparko pulled him into a tight embrace, tenderly kissing his forehead again, rubbing a gentle hand along his back, unlatching a small service panel and pressing and holding three switches concealed within…

For a brief moment he was sucked back into his hivemind server, his only sense of self a single blinking command line prompt on an otherwise black screen somewhere in the basement at Boxmore, but the darkness cleared soon enough as his consciousness downloaded itself back into his body. Darrell shook his head, his systems correcting a few remaining glitches, as his eye changed back to its usual color. "Uh...Sparko? Did you just soft reset me?"

"I had to, Darrell." Sparko shook his head, smirking. "You were pink again!"

"Oh." He confirmed that, yes, the lights on his chest and hands were back to yellow, meaning he had returned to his default settings. "I didn't do anything too weird this time, did I?"

"No, I think you're okay." Sparko scanned the farmhouse to make sure everything was as he'd left it only a few hours before -- that time Darrell had almost burned the place down setting out dozens of candles with his favorite scents as a "romantic surprise" still lingered in his mind, as well as in the air a little. "I told you to  _ let me know _ if I zap you too hard, though!"

"Okay, okay!" Darrell kissed him, out of genuine love this time, which was gladly accepted. He suddenly perked up, as semi-corrupted memories started to return. "Shoot, I think I totally skipped doing all my planting this morning!"

Sparko floated leisurely behind him as he dashed out to the barn, and attempted to start up his tractor, to no success. "Oh, I forgot. Tractor's broke."

"Don't worry, I got you covered!" Smiling, his boyfriend pulled various machine parts from his tote bag, handing them to the robot as his eye widened in recognition. "You asked me to pick these up from Boxmore when I got off work, remember?"

"Oh, yeah!" Right away, Darrell set out all the parts he needed to fix the tractor onto a nearby workbench, along with a box of wrenches and screwdrivers. "Man, whenever I glitch out like that my memory gets so messed up…"

As he opened up the tractor to examine its engine, Sparko leaned over his shoulder, wrinkling his nose at the strong but expected smell of diesel. "How long you think it's gonna take this time?"

"Well…" Darrell sighed, poking at a few wires and fans. "The engine's been seizing up, there's a lot of gunked-up valves I think. But, those aren't too hard to replace, or that leaking fuel line once I get those out of the way..." 

He smiled up at Sparko, twirling a well-worn wrench between his claws. "Why don't you go on back to the house and time me? I'm thinkin' less than an hour!"

"Alright, I'll be waiting!" With an even bigger smile, Sparko let him get to work, carrying his bag and the groceries still within to the kitchen.

He looked around, and sighed. It seemed Darrell had spent the morning baking him cookies, in his glitchy lovesick haze, but hadn't actually done any of the necessary cleanup afterward. He put the groceries away and scrubbed the numerous bowls and baking sheets that littered the place, settling down while they dried to try a few of the treats that filled a big platter on the table -- some were sugar cookies, some chocolate chip, some even with marshmallows baked in that Sparko made sure to separate out for himself, and almost all regardless of type were heart-shaped and caked in a thick layer of multicolored frosting and sprinkles, whether they needed it or not.

The next time Darrell glitched and pulled off some grand romantic gesture, Sparko vowed to hide the sugar, perhaps in the same spot as the matches. 

A loud engine roar echoed in the distance, and Sparko hurriedly looked over at the clock as he realized he'd forgotten to actually time Darrell, but the sound grew louder, almost deafening, making everything in the room rattle before it finally cut off. Like Darrell's oft-broken down tractor, however, it was an engine sound he'd recognize anywhere, and he shoved half a cookie into his mouth before finally working up the nerve to greet his guests.

Any nerve he'd built up, though, flew right out of him the instant Foxtail stepped out of her old plane, dressed neither in her old POINT commander uniform, nor her even older wrestling costume, but rather...a tie-dyed T-shirt, gaudy bedazzled jean overalls, and sandals over socks? Sparko tried his best not to say a word about the fashion disaster in front of him, reminding himself over and over that she hadn't been a civilian in a very, very long time.

"Ah, Sparko! It's been so long!" Elodie hopped out of the other side of the vehicle to greet him, while Doctor Greyman wheeled himself out the back. "We're glad to see you've been well!"

"Heh, same to you!" He shook the POINT commander's hand as it was offered, carefully keeping his electric power in check. "Uh, how did you know where I live now, though? I don't think I ever told you guys the address…"

With a sly smile, Elodie pulled out a rather unwieldy stack of papers. "You wouldn't believe the amount of information POINT has access to on almost every hero in the region, Sparko! This is your file alone." Not wanting to carry it all with her, she chucked the papers back into the plane as he motioned for the trio to follow him inside.

As they approached the porch though, which certainly wasn't wheelchair-accessible, Sparko hissed sharply through his teeth as he searched for anything that could serve as a ramp. It turned out to be unnecessary, though -- without hesitation Foxtail scooped up Greyman's entire chair and held it high above her with only one hand, while the blushing alien giggled inside. She gave him a few seconds in the air before slowly, gently setting the chair back down at the top of the porch steps, allowing him to handle the rest of the way himself. The kitchen table also proved to be rather awkward for him, though thankfully there was an extra not-wheeled chair and a couple of large books he could transfer himself right onto, with the others taking their seats around it as well.

"Ooh, cookies!" Greyman glanced up at Sparko. "May I?"

"Go ahead!" It wasn't like there weren't far too many for Sparko and Darrell to eat on their own. "I just hope you like lots of sugar, though, my boyfriend goes a little overboard sometimes…"

He definitely didn't mind, happily chowing down on one of the sugar-frosted sugar cookies with extra sugar sprinkled on top, so Sparko wasted no time catching up with his former teacher. "So, how's your re-retirement so far?"

"Oh, can't complain. Contributing to Dr Roo's newest proposal on sub-atomic search and rescue squads, trying to catch up in Northfight 2, and finally getting to sleep in on the weekends." He laid a comparatively tiny hand onto one of Foxtail's muscular forearms, patting it fondly. "But mostly, I'm just spending as much time as I can with my Foxy. We waited a little longer than we should've, I'm afraid, so I'm grateful we finally get a chance to make up for it."

At this, Foxtail's hard eyes softened, as she returned the gesture, patting his hand with her own.

"Wow, I wouldn't have thought you'd be so busy!"

He just laughed. "Don't you worry, Sparko, I've still got a few good decades left in me!" To Sparko's astonishment Greyman pulled his unkempt beard right off, laying it onto the table and playfully jabbing a finger at it. "Heck, the team got me this for my 100th birthday as a joke, I been wearing it and playing up the accent ever since just to see if any of my students could figure out I was faking!"

He paused, dropping his accent as well. "Nobody ever did. A tragedy, really…"

Sparko finally managed to tear his eyes off the beard, staring instead at Greyman's real face, realizing that without it he barely looked a day older than he did on that ancient POW card he'd had as a kid. "So, wait, was all of it fake?!"

"No, sadly, the wheelchair's real. That was just me jumping off a building and forgetting I couldn't use my powers to soften the landing, one too many times." The alien cleared his throat, uncomfortably. "Those aren't fun hospital trips, let me tell ya. Sparko my boy, you watch yourself whenever you're flyin' around Neo Riot City, you hear me?"

He saluted his former teacher. "Yes, sir!"

Greyman cracked up at Sparko's enthusiastic reply, but next to him Foxtail merely held her hand up. "You don't need to be on ceremony with us now, son. After all, we're in your house."

"Well, technically it's Darrell's place! He'll probably be back in a couple minutes." There was absolutely no way Darrell could have missed the giant, deafening POINT plane landing right in the front yard, right?

"Ah, yes, we have his records too, 'Darrell Boxman'…" Elodie pulled out another, smaller file from her jacket pocket, only a few pages long but with several parts highlighted and underlined with red marker, and an ever-growing list of establishments and public events the villain was permanently banned from scrawled in the margins. "Your boyfriend, I presume? It...is still 'boyfriend,' correct? Sometimes even our records are a few months out of date."

"Oh, yeah, Darrell and I aren't married yet." Sparko hadn't intended to add that final word, but, he mused to himself, it didn't feel too bad. Perhaps, someday, he would indeed marry that robot -- by that point, it wasn't like making it official would even change things too much.

She continued, despite Sparko's introspection. "I'll admit I never did anticipate you having a thing for...farmers. Or villains, for that matter."

He smiled at her. "Sometimes things don't work out the way you'd expect,  _ Commander _ Elodie."

Her signature haughty laugh rang out. "Indeed!"

"So you seriously kept tabs on me even after I left POINT Prep?" Elodie allowed him to briefly look through the papers. "And...Darrell too?"

"Well, naturally," she started, "on top of your status as an ex-student, you also had special status as a person of interest, as per Foxtail's recommendation. So POINT's been keeping a very, very close eye on you, Sparko."

"A...person of interest?" Sparko shuddered, a distant memory suddenly surfacing, which Foxtail wasted no time in bringing up as well.

"Sparko, back in 201X you prank-called the ex-leader of POINT, from a number belonging to a longtime nuisance who had close connections to two high-level supervillains, and a follow-up investigation found that you'd started  _ datin' _ the guy. Of course you were gonna be on every single POINT watchlist after that!" She clenched her fists, but at a quick glance from Greyman she started to calm down. "For a while we even had you marked down as an undercover villain yourself, though thankfully a second investigation proved otherwise."

Sparko scoffed. "Hey, Darrell might be a villain, but I'm still all hero! In fact, I  _ stopped _ him from demonstrating that sheep-powered ray gun he came up with at Lakewood County Fair 202X!"

"Yeah, that one's in both your files as well," Foxtail replied. "But I would like to know whose idea it was to send me that tiny model POINT Prep bus as a retirement present, the one with the button on the back, that if you pressed it it said 'Foxtail sucks' in the voice I  _ thought _ I ordered all those years ago?" 

"Uh...that one was Darrell's too."

"You sure didn't see fit to stop him that time, did you?"

She glared at Sparko, who could only shrug. "I thought it was funny!"

"Well, I will give ya that, it was...clever." Foxtail's sour expression softened into a tired smirk, as she shook her head. "At least it wasn't another of Boxmore's usual prank shipments, think we're good on practice targets for the next decade from the 3000 Ernesto plushies they sent us the year before.

"We also donated a few hundred to the orphanage, and the kids got a real kick out of 'em," Greyman added. "Literally!"

"Well, just 'cause you're both retired now doesn't mean you shouldn't be ready for more!" Sparko leaned in across the table to whisper. "And y'all didn't hear this from me, but this year they're gonna bake you an army of cakes, filled with-"

The sounds of the front door opening and a pair of heavy cowboy boots pacing across the floor shut him up before he could ruin the rest of the surprise.

"I must have forgot we were having people over today too!" Darrell entered the kitchen, wiping engine grease off of his claws with an old rag. "Howdy!"

The villain looked around the room, at the head and former head of POINT, and the organization's former head of Wisdom, three of the most famous superheroes in the region, all sitting right there with his boyfriend, and a single bead of artificial sweat dripped down the side of his face.

"Bye!" A disappointed Sparko watched as he ran from the room and out of the house entirely, and heard the faint droning of his tractor engine fading into the distance. Foxtail raised an eyebrow as well, but kept quiet and politely choked down the rest of her cookie.

"Well, he seems...nice," Elodie observed, finally breaking the uncomfortable silence. "I never anticipated you having a thing for robots, either."

"Hah, I did! Remember all those little anime robots you used to doodle all over your homework at the beginning of your first semester?"

Sparko just stared blankly at Greyman. "Wow...I don't." He must have focused so much on trying to fit in the rest of his time at POINT Prep that he'd forgotten completely! "How can you even remember something like that after so long, Doctor?"

"I remember every single one of my students, even you and Enid. That's an important part of teaching, you know, so you'd better remember it once you get up in front of your first class!" Greyman glanced up at the newly-framed teaching certificate that proudly hung on the wall, something even more valuable to Sparko than all of his hard-earned degrees. "I used POINT's resources to check in on both of you every now and then. And I wanted you to know, I'm proud of you, Sparko."

"Thank you, sir. That...really means a lot." Sparko's guests gave him a few moments to dry his eyes, and Elodie pulled out a small chrome-plated box from her jacket, gently laying it onto the table in front of her. 

"Now, then...catching up is all well and good, but I do believe we have some business to discuss."

\---

Finally off the noisy highway, where far too many other drivers had rudely honked at him the entire way, Darrell made it back to Lakewood on his slow, road-hogging tractor. For a while he considered spending some time at Boxmore catching up with his siblings, or at the plaza, but a small explosion caught his attention as he took a shortcut through the town's industrial district. He hurriedly parked and ran at twice his vehicle's top speed towards a cloud of smoke surrounding the small electrical engineering lab tucked in between a few large office complexes, where a couple of scientists tried in vain to clear the air by waving sheets of paper as makeshift fans, but the progress they made was minimal compared to what Darrell could do using the air jets hidden in his feet.

"Darrell, I'm not sure how you timed that so perfectly, but for once you're our hero," Sparko's father exclaimed, locking his son's boyfriend into a bear hug.

"Heh...maybe don't say that too loud, okay guys?"

"Oh, no one around here's listenin'!" Sparko's mother smiled at him. "We were actually thinking about going down to the farm to see you two and catch up! Sparko doesn't happen to be with you, does he?" 

"Nah, he was...busy." Darrell tapped his fingers together, averting his gaze. "Hey, do you guys know if he has any friends I don't know about? Some...POINT ones?"

The two looked at each other, alarmed, but eventually Sparko's father patted the robot's shoulder. "Look, son, the day we got Sparko's birth certificate filed, meaning he was officially our child instead of just Static Discharge Experiment #83, his mother and I made a promise that the only thing in his life we wouldn't try to push him on would be his social life. His friends, his teammates...who he chose to fall in love with, that was his business, not ours! So, I wouldn't be surprised if he has a few friends you haven't met, but please don't take it personally."

"I'm not! It was just...really weird havin' full-on superheroes in the house. And not good weird." He shivered. "I just had to get out and clear my head."

"Well, you're always welcome to stay with us for a couple hours, Darrell! We're a little busy today, but I'll make you some coffee!"

He smiled. "Thanks, Mom."

With the smoke cleared, Darrell took a second to pet the kitten-model Mikayla who excitedly greeted him at the door, before following them to a scorched lab bench, upon which was perched an assortment of electrical components and wires. Sparko's mother dashed right for the coffee pot, the explosion miraculously not even spilling its contents, while her husband carefully examined the charred remains of their work.

"Ah, I think I see the problem," he remarked, reaching down to tap a few wires with a pen, right at the spot where they'd been soldered to a small circuit board. "I believe we may have overloaded-!!"

The wires suddenly sparked, causing him to hurriedly retract his hand, only narrowly avoiding a dangerous shock. After a short pause he pulled an electrical cord from the nearby wall outlet. "Still live."

"You keep forgettin' that and we might be working by flashlight again," his wife snarked as she returned from the kitchen, pointing to the flickering lights overhead. She noticed Darrell intently watching from atop the adjacent lab bench he had claimed as a seat, and passed him a mug filled half with coffee and half with milk as both her boys liked. "Oh, Darrell, you don't have to sit up there, we're not gonna try and take you apart! Again…"

"It's okay, I'm really comfortable on lab benches." It was hard-coded into him, a small mercy considering all the time he'd been stuck laying on one whenever he needed repairs growing up, so he refused the chair she offered him instead and greedily drained his coffee. "So, what were you two tryin' to invent this time?"

"It's supposed to be a new kind of toaster, that cooks bread by shocking it! But, we can't seem to get the base circuit right." She settled in next to her husband, looking over the failed circuit as well. "By the way, how's your dad been since he settled down? The last few engineering meetups have been almost boring without him tryin' to blow the place up!"

"My daddy's doing great! He even got back together with Professor Venomous, for...some reason." A very slight growl seeped into Darrell's voice. "Even though I kinda wanted to blast that bastard back into orbit…" He didn't swear often, especially not in front of anyone else, but in this case it was more than appropriate.

The father interrupted, pointing out a small, scorched part of the board to his wife. "I'm sure I've found the problem. That last batch of diodes must have been flawed, they overload much more easily than we'd thought."

"You're blaming those diodes again? I told you, those are fine, it has to be the thermal compound! You're just too stingy with it, and the generated heat's too much for it all!"

"Someone needs to be stingy with the thermal compound, otherwise we go through six tubes of it in less than a day!"

"But it's so sparkly…" 

Darrell couldn't help but laugh. Despite occurring in a hero household, the whole scene reminded him so much of watching his dads develop new weapons in their own lab, though without that subtle trepidation of knowing he'd soon have those weapons installed into him to use on the plaza, to similarly explosive results. Though, as they continued their work, he could definitely see how these two had somehow messed up an experiment on containing static discharge so badly it resulted in the creation of their son.

Eventually their pet Mikayla jumped up onto his lap, purring and demanding a few scratches behind the ears, which Darrell gladly obliged. She wasn't one of the models connected to her hivemind, sadly, so no catching up with the rest of his family, but he still allowed himself to relax, almost forgetting the day's events as he contributed a few engineering suggestions and finished a few more mugs of coffee.

\---

By the time he returned home to Darrell Acres the POINT plane was nowhere to be found, to his immense relief, but curiously, neither was Sparko. Darrell checked every room in the house, wandered through a couple of the cornfields, and even poked his head into the barn. Just as he was about to assume his boyfriend had gone for a late-afternoon flight, though, he noticed that one of the lightning rods he'd set up behind the barn was active despite the clear weather, meaning it had stored up a charge, but that charge refused to dissipate safely into the ground. And it only behaved like that with one particular lightning bolt…

He leaned in towards the metal rod, speaking softly to a persistent arc of electricity that twisted around it. "Hey, time to wake up, Sparko!"

The bolt of lightning stirred at his voice, eventually reforming his humanoid features and yawning as Sparko slowly awakened from his nap. "Ugh, sorry, I didn't think I'd sleep that long…"

"It's fine, but...you know that's for storms, right?" 

He sure felt a storm brewing inside him, as he pulled himself away and into Darrell's arms, nuzzling into his leather jacket. Strangely, it didn't smell like dirt and diesel fuel and fertilizer this time, the usual sign his man had been working hard around the farm, but rather, Sparko detected a very familiar hint of...blue smoke? He wasn't sure where that might have come from, but he didn't pry. Darrell could have his secrets, just as he, unfortunately, had his own.

"Darrell, I...did somethin' I don't think you're gonna like," he started, allowing the robot to release him. With a noticeable static charge in the air between them, he flew back to the lightning rod, retrieving a small metal box at its base.

"Sparko, if you're talking about bringing your hero friends over for a visit, that's...that's okay, as long as you let me know they're coming first!" He crossed his arms. "It's kind of a jerk move to just let heroes right into a villain's house without setting traps first, you know!"

The idea that what he'd done was actually offensive certainly didn't help the growing unease inside Sparko, and he took a deep breath to prepare himself. "Geez, sorry, I won't do that again, I promise! But, they weren't really here just to visit. I got a…a job offer."

"A job offer?!" Darrell's initial response, as expected, was quite overjoyed, as he hopped up and down a few times in excitement. "That's great! Finally all that school pays off, no more customer service for you, Sparko!"

"Y-Yeah…" Sweating, Sparko smiled, but then Darrell started to piece everything together, and his expression dropped.

"Wait, what does that have to do with POINT? Uh...they weren't the ones  _ offering _ you the job, right?"

"They...were." He hid his face in his hands. "When they saw I got my teaching certificate, they pulled out one of their old rules on recruiting Junior Members, so that I could fill the teaching spot Doctor Greyman was leaving in the Wisdom department at POINT Prep. With a record a mile long, they had more than enough intel to recommend me anyway!"

"Please...Please tell me you said no."

"I said I needed some extra time to think it over, and they gave me two days."

"Two days?" Darrell huffed. "POINT really thinks it's gonna take that long for you to tell 'em to take a hike?!"

"Darrell, that was two days ago, over the phone." He shook his head sadly, as Darrell's face only dropped even more. "They were here today to talk about my acceptance, and so we could work out arrangements for me livin' here instead of at HQ."

"Ac-Acceptance!?"

"Yeah…" Sparko opened the box in his hands, revealing the chrome-plated badge and stick of gum inside, but Darrell kept his eye locked onto his face, the fans in his chest spinning faster and faster as he spoke over the noise. "I'm a Junior Member of POINT, startin' today. Or...tomorrow, since they still got some paperwork to process."

Darrell couldn't respond, uttering only a few short grunts as his speech synthesizer gave out, and the camera aperture in his eye narrowed to block as much light as it could, its red iris becoming much more visible than usual. The beginnings of a panic attack, which fortunately were recognizable enough that Sparko could grab and stabilize him, placing a gentle hand over his eye and running the other over his braincase to bring even a tiny bit of comfort, all of which Darrell accepted despite the betrayal that had brought it all on.

"Sorry I didn't tell you. I was just...afraid you'd say no…"

"Of...Of...Of COURSE I was gonna say no! I'm a VILLAIN, Sparko!" Barely returning to functionality, Darrell suddenly shoved his boyfriend off of him, giving a very particular snarl the hero hadn't seen in years. "I can't just...go around with a member of POINT!"

"What's wrong with that?" He shrugged. "You're not worried about your family, are you Darrell? Last I heard they were fine with me bein' a hero!"

" _ But villains buy robots from Boxmore, as their first line of defense. _ " His voice cracked. "Sparko, even if you're just a Junior Member, you're not gonna just be teaching kids, you're gonna be fighting other villains, my siblings included, every single day! And...maybe even a couple of me!"

"Oh...damn." Sparko didn't swear often, especially not around Darrell, but in this case it was more than appropriate. "Well...what else am I supposed to do? Go back to workin' at a convenience store every single day? I'm a  _ teacher _ now, Darrell, and a full hero too!"

"You can't teach at POINT Prep. You can't be a member of POINT."

"That isn't up to you!"

The panic attack completely faded, with Darrell's much more stable combat programming taking its place. He formed his arm cannon, pointing it menacingly at Sparko. "I'm not dating a member of POINT. That one  _ is  _ up to me."

Sparko sighed, sadly, as the air around him crackled with static electricity. "You shoot at me, and I'll have to get some evil robot-destroying practice in!"

"Then I guess this is a power battle." Giving no other warning, Darrell fired at the ground, the dirt spray blinding Sparko rather than outright hurting him.

He should have known that, even though he'd long since moved on from Boxmore and its daily hero battles across the street, he'd still have to fight eventually. He was a Darrell unit. Fighting heroes was what he was built for. 

He just wished it didn't have to be his favorite hero…

With Sparko still shaking off the dirt Darrell hid behind the barn, taking the few seconds he'd bought with such a move to process his current situation and come up with the most effective strategy to...not to kill his opponent, of course! Just to...hurt him a little. Just like Darrell's heart, or where it should be, hurt. It wasn't easy, when every single line of his programming was screaming at him to destroy once again, just like old times, but eventually he selected the plan he liked the most and readied himself for battle.

To Sparko's surprise, that strategy ended up being simply to charge straight at him, laughing maniacally and with his arm cannon blazing. It wasn't hard for him to dodge the blasts in midair, as he tried to find a way, any way, to subdue Darrell without harming him, and fast -- the sooner the battle ended, the sooner he might calm down and give Sparko another chance to explain himself.

Thankfully, though, unlike Darrell, who had withdrawn almost completely from fighting over the past several years, Sparko had more than enough combat experience from both the plaza and from his classes to back him up. He rocketed through the air behind Darrell, trying to grab and restrain him, but the robot wiggled free, and dodged lightning blast after lightning blast before finally ducking behind the corner of the farmhouse, out of Sparko's range.

"Sparko, this is POINT we're talking about," he shouted from his cover. "They're not just a bunch of jerks, you went to their school and they put glorbs in you and messed you up! Don't you remember?"

The memories still stung, but not as badly as it had when he'd left POINT Prep; time really did have a funny way of letting one forgive and forget. "Darrell, even if POINT did me wrong back then, it was my dream when I was a kid! And...it's still been my dream since!" He swept his arm out towards the crop fields across Darrell Acres, and the big barn in the middle of them all. "You got to have yours, why don't I get to have mine?"

Darrell finally leapt back out onto the battlefield, though this time instead of his arm cannon he pointed a simple garden hose in Sparko's direction, the one he used for watering the small vegetable patches closest to the house. Sparko stopped in his tracks, trembling at the sight of the dangerous "weapon." 

"You wouldn't."

Darrell paused, staring him down, but then sighed and tossed the hose away. "...I wouldn't." No matter the offense, there were lines even a villain didn't cross. He slumped against the barn, exhausted more from heartache than from the stress that the short battle had put on his systems. "Look, just...take me out, so I can reboot back at Boxmore. I wanna go be mad at you somewhere else."

"You're still mad? After all this?"

"Yeah."

Sparko's shoulders dropped, and he offered a hand to his boyfriend, to try and stop their fight before things got any worse. "Look, I'm sorry. I shoulda run all this by you the first time they called, so we could talk it over."

"I'm not accepting apologies right now!" Refusing to even look at Sparko through his tears, Darrell slapped his hand away and stomped back into the house, slamming the door behind him, and the bedroom door as Sparko followed him inside.

None of the doors in the house had any locks, with Darrell apparently not even understanding the concept for a long time, but Sparko still didn't dare open it, opting instead to knock. "Darrell, you okay? Can I come in?" When he didn't get a response, Sparko just sighed, leaning with his back against the door. "I'm sorry."

Something heavy slammed into the wood behind him, as if it had been thrown across the room, so he gave up, retreating for a few hours. Long enough to reheat some dinner, and to try again with Darrell's food in hand, to the exact same result.

"Baby, it's getting pretty late," Sparko called out for one final attempt. "How about we just sleep on this, and talk about it in the morning?"

Darrell was quiet for a while, and Sparko almost expected the silent treatment to last the whole night, but his tired voice finally rang out. "Sleep on the couch." 

Well, it was something, at least, and he obediently did as Darrell requested, lounging on the living room couch with little else to do besides focus on the thoughts racing through his head. What if being a famous superhero really did mean he couldn't be with a villain like Darrell anymore? What if Darrell never forgave him? Or, worst of all, what if POINT decided to go after-

_ Okay, hang on. Stop panicking. _ Sparko shook off the sparks he had started producing and took a few deep breaths, his hand shooting towards an electrical outlet on a nearby wall -- if nothing else, it was grounded, which was what he needed, literally as well as figuratively. Slowly, he started to calm down, collapsing face-first back onto the couch. It was fine, this was just a disagreement, couples had them all the time! It was the first time one of them actually had to sleep on the couch after one, but they'd figure it all out in the morning, once things had finally cooled down. He zapped the lightswitch and tried to get comfortable, but after an hour of desperately trying and failing to do so he gave up, floating back to the bedroom with his own glow lighting the way. Hopefully, Darrell would forgive him sneaking in to grab a pillow...

He listened at the door, then carefully opened it. Darrell wasn't snoring as usual, but he didn't react at all to the noise, tucked into bed and facing away, so Sparko assumed he was asleep, and made his way silently to his own side of the bed closest to the door. He examined the room sadly -- the robot had taken out his remaining anger in a rather destructive fashion, with old, broken kid's meal toys scattered across the floor, burns from stray plasma blasts marking the walls, and the meticulously-crafted cowboy jacket and hat that Darrell had made just for Sparko, to match his own, shredded at the foot of the bed. Sparko had never actually worn the costume more than once, but he knew how much work had gone into it, and how much it had to hurt to destroy it like that.

Gently pulling down the covers to better gain access to the pillow he sought, a risky yet tempting thought hit him: Screw the couch, what was the worst Darrell would do if he just got in, wake up? As careful as he could do so, to not disturb his boyfriend, Sparko slipped into bed, finally able to get comfortable. 

He couldn't help but gently run his hand up and down the sleeping Darrell's back; somewhere within his chest a fan was still whirring at maximum speed, making his outer casing vibrate a little, but he knew Darrell couldn't actually feel the slight touch, so he was safe. 

"Babe...I'm sorry," Sparko whispered one last time, snuggling deeper into the blankets and withdrawing his hand, but as he did so Darrell suddenly turned around to grab it, his eye open only a tiny sliver but still wet with tears.

"Shoot, I-I thought you were asleep!"

"It's okay." Darrell sniffled, despite not having a nose, and gripped his hand tighter. "Hey Sparko...can I ask you something?"

"Sure, Darrell. Anything."

Darrell spoke slowly, his voice barely above a whisper. "Now that you're a POINT hero, you're probably gonna fight all kinds of villains...and robots...but I'm still gonna be your favorite, right?"

One more tear rolled down the center of Darrell's face, and Sparko wiped it away, with the most comforting smile he could manage. "Of course, you'll always be my favorite villain. Heck, I don't even think I'm gonna like all those fancy-pants heroes as much as you!"

At this, Darrell giggled, and used a corner of the blanket to wipe himself dry so that Sparko could pull him closer. "That's...a dumb thing to get mad at you about, huh? That you won't like me anymore when you're fighting other robots every day?"

"I won't let it get to me, Darrell. For every Boxmore robot I destroy, I'm gonna come home and love mine that much more."

"I promise I'll make you a new cowboy costume."

"It's, uh...okay. You don't have to." He wrapped his arms around Darrell's head, resting his cheek against his braincase, as the robot buried his face into Sparko's chest and curled his legs securely underneath both of them. It was Darrell's favorite sleeping arrangement -- he always did find Sparko's heartbeat fascinating, and let it finally lull him to sleep, just as the slow but steady vibration of his own cooling fans did the same for his boyfriend.

\---

Darrell's iron (and titanium) knuckles made the sound of his knocking on the door echo not only through the bedroom beyond, but throughout the entire house as well.

"Sparko, are you up yet? Breakfast is getting cold! And you know if Raymond hears about me feeding your leftover eggs to his chickens again…" The robot trailed off, but kept tapping his boot impatiently, until it became obvious he wasn't going to get a response. He checked the empty bedroom, then the rest of the house, finding no sign of Sparko.

"Not again…" He started knocking on the walls as well. "You're not in the wiring, are you?"

Darrell poked his head outside, looking for any flashes of lightning flying over his cornfields -- he couldn't have left that early for his first day, could he? And skip one of Darrell's famous (in his own words, at least) farm-fresh breakfasts? 

"Sparko…"

"Yes?" His head poked right down from above the porch, startling Darrell. "Oh, shoot, breakfast, right? I'll be there, just give me a sec."

"What the heck are you doing up there?" Darrell climbed up after him as he retreated back onto the roof, a strangely troubled look on his face. "Whoa, your new uniform really does look cool!"

"Heh, I shoulda guessed the biggest costume fan in the Neutral Zone would get a kick out of it!" Slowly, Sparko modeled it a little while his boyfriend got comfortable, though his eye quickly zeroed in on the messy tie, as Sparko feared it would. Feeling the pressure, he fidgeted with the thing and attempted to retie it again, to no success. "Does it have to include a tie, though? The student uniforms didn't have 'em, I dunno why Elodie had to throw that in to the new instructor ones…"

"Let me try." He relented, allowing Darrell to finally tie it properly for him. "All my siblings and me used to give Daddy different-colored ties every year for Father's Day, but he'd only wear the ones he bought, and dumped all the rest on me to use for my costumes." His task completed, Darrell carefully stepped back, nodding in approval. "So, I guess I'm a bit of an expert with 'em!"

"I'll say! You're gonna teach me how to do that when I get back, right?"

"Of course! Can't let you have  _ all _ the fun, 'Professor' Sparko!" Darrell giggled. "You know, you really do look good in blue."

Sparko just rolled his eyes, powerless to stop a faint blush that made Darrell laugh even harder. "I always figured you liked me in that dumb crop top!"

"Yeah, I'll miss it. But, seeing you in this every day won't be so bad…" He made one final adjustment, straightening the cute lightning bolt pin they'd let Sparko add to the look -- as a member of a professional superhero organization, even just a Junior one, Sparko needed to look his best. But, even the most pristine, professional outfit couldn't distract from the anxious look that lingered in his eyes.

"It's not just the tie that's makin' you nervous, huh?"

"Heh...What doesn't make me nervous?" He tried not to look at Darrell anymore, but as he sat onto the roof next to him Sparko inched closer, letting his lower half cling to Darrell's leg, the sensation of being conducted by anything metal bringing a tiny bit of comfort. "I'm really going back to POINT Prep after all, aren't I? After all these years of tryin' to get over what they did to me when I was a kid..."

"But you seemed ready when you accepted! You were even willing to fight me to go!" 

He didn't respond, and Darrell could feel a growing electric charge flowing through his outer casing, that threatened to fry the circuits underneath if he didn't cheer Sparko up fast.

"I know you get nervous and hide like this when something's bugging you, but this time, you didn't make a mistake. You knew this was your dream, even if the things they tried to do to you before wasn't part of it, and you finally made it happen, just like I did!" He scooped up Sparko's hand, squeezing it tight enough to almost cut off circulation, even through the thick rubber gloves. "You're not just  _ my _ hero anymore! But...I'm willing to share you."

Sparko's smile returned, and with the hard part accomplished, Darrell held up one of his claws. "Hey, wait right here for a second, okay? We haven't had breakfast on the roof in forever!" He returned shortly with two plates of eggs and battery acid sausages, which definitely brought Sparko's mood back up the rest of the way.

"So you think it's gonna rain today, for my crops?"

Sparko watched the wispy clouds overhead, feeling a present but insignificant charge in the air. "Well, we don't have a thunderstorm brewin', that's for sure. You know, I haven't seen Professor Sunshine in years, maybe I can ask her once I get there! Her powers included all kinds of weather, not just lightning!"

"Aww, but I like my weathervane better…" Nonchalantly tossing his empty plate to the ground, Darrell pulled his boyfriend close again, the two sharing one last morning kiss.

The wispy clouds suddenly parted, and the sky turned a shade of purple that would have made Darrell's stomach turn if it were capable of doing so. Instead of a giant box falling from the sky, though, the bus to POINT Prep emerged from its portal, waiting for its final passenger.

For only a second as he boarded, Sparko glanced back at up at the roof, where his favorite villain smiled encouragingly.

"Well, go on! Don't you gotta go stop a bank robber from volcano-ing kittens stuck in a tree, or...whatever you superheroes do?"

"Yeah, yeah…" He winked at Darrell. "Just don't be  _ too _ evil while I'm gone, I'll hear about it!" 

Several curious students' eyes were on Sparko as he took one of the empty front seats, and the bus blasted off through another wormhole. They didn't seem to know what to make of their new Wisdom teacher at first, particularly once the bus' PA system shouted out its next stop, and he suddenly doubled over in hysterics, muttering something about someone named "Ernesto." 


	9. Surprises

There wasn't much on Social Media about the event yet, which was to be expected seeing as how it had only taken place the night before, and most of its attendees, and their phones, had apparently been blown up by the end. But, regardless, Darrell and his siblings had posted a few photos, which Sparko happily scrolled through. Darrell had also private messaged him a selfie he'd taken in a rather steamy pose in his perfectly-fitting tuxedo, which within seconds had been set as his new phone wallpaper, along with several texts about how much he'd wished Sparko was there.

Glancing at that photo again and setting his phone aside, he took another sip of clear soda through one of Darrell's favorite crazy straws, though he figured the robot wouldn't mind in this case, and flopped back down onto the couch, his eyes barely focusing on the TV. A rerun of some old talk show hosted by a ghost-themed superhero in space was on, providing at least some distraction, though it was ultimately minimal.

That was the thing with Darrell's cooking: Sometimes you got a delicious meal, sometimes you got something edible at best, and sometimes you got straight-up food poisoning. Sparko's stomach groaned again, and he tried to roll over into a more comfortable position, but was interrupted by some distant shouting.

"I'm home!!" Darrell burst through the door, and without even giving his boyfriend a chance to greet him he shoved a single purple lily in a paper cup into his hands.

"Uh...what's this?" Weakly, Sparko managed to float up into a sitting position, examining the gift. Darrell wasn't normally the flowers-and-chocolates type, with gifts of toy weapons or dubious baked goods or cool rocks he found on the ground far more common from him, and he looked up at the robot for an explanation, as Darrell returned from respectfully hiding some leftover cake in the kitchen and collapsed onto the couch next to him.

"It's from the bouquet. Foxtail gave it to me after I told her why you weren't there." He smiled. "Everyone said they hope you get well soon."

"Thanks…" He backtracked as he realized what Darrell had just said. "Wait, Foxtail caught it? Really? That's great!"

"She really was surprised, I guess we'll both get to go to hers!" Darrell sighed, happily. "I wish you'd been there, my daddys' wedding was so beautiful! Well, what I remember of it…" He giggled, still shaking off the last remnants of his hangover, and his expression softened. "Are you feeling any better?"

Sparko glanced down towards a bucket on the floor nearby, thankfully empty. "I stopped throwin' up. So...yeah." He gently laid the flower onto the table next to him and repositioned both his pillow and his head onto Darrell's lap, illness easily spoiling his excitement at finally having it close again. 

"I'm still sorry about that salmon, I thought I finished cooking it…" Darrell amused himself by poking at Sparko's braids a little with his claws -- it was rare he ever had his helmet off, since his frizzy hair almost constantly stuck straight up and out with all the static running through it, meaning every single day was a bad hair day, no exceptions. Even braiding it did almost nothing to make it more manageable, but to a robot who had no hair whatsoever, that just made it an even more unique sight!

"It's okay. I forgive you." Sparko didn't mind the gentle pulling at his hair; after all, Darrell was the one who had braided it in the first place. Besides, he was the only person in the world who Darrell allowed to paint or even see his toenails, something he lacked himself, so it was a fair trade. "You can make it up to me when I can eat again."

"Deal! Hehe, I can't wait for ours!"

"Ours?"

"Yeah! You know, after Foxtail's wedding, she promised she'd aim for us with the bouquet." He giggled. "And after that, we can make our kids and live on the farm together the rest of your life and everything will be perfect!"

"H-Hang on, back up a second. Kids,  _ plural? _ " Sparko glanced down at his lightning half. "And how would we even…?"

"Don't worry, I can build them, just like how I was born! They'd be all robotic, but I can design them to take after both of us. And I come from a big family, so I really want a lot! Maybe five?"

Sparko almost had a heart attack right there, and pulled the bucket closer just in case as the sick feeling in his guts intensified. "Whoa there, cowboy, slow down!" He hated to disappoint Darrell, especially when he was this excited, but he just couldn't take it anymore. "I don't even think I could handle one kid yet! What if I hurt it, or mess something up? Or what if it hates-"

"You won't mess up, Sparko! You're already great with Robbie!"

"Yeah, but Robbie's just a baby, and he's only here for a visit every other weekend," he sighed. "I'm not...a real full-time dad yet. And I dunno if I should be." 

He caught himself, as Darrell's face dropped. "Maybe we could just try a dog first? You love dogs!"

"I do love dogs, but then my daddy couldn't visit us anymore because he's allergic." He thought for a moment. "I guess we could build a robot dog, like he built Double Beat for us, but at that point we may as well just go all the way!"

"Look, Darrell, it's not that I don't want to start a family with you. It's just...I literally just started teaching at POINT Prep! Can you take it a little slower, for now?" Laying back down onto Darrell's lap, he grabbed the robot's hand, squeezing it tight. "Let's just...get married first. And then we can talk about  _ one _ kid, and see where we go from there, alright?"

Darrell was still disappointed, but smiled in spite of it. "Okay. I'll take it a little slower. For now." Inside his hivemind, he shoved the files for their kids' blueprints into an archive folder, for later use. "So...when  _ are _ we getting married, then? I know you're hiding the ring in my underwear drawer."

"When the heck did you wear underwear?!" The robot almost never did, even if he kept a drawer full of them for reasons Sparko would never be able to understand, though he'd figured that only made it the perfect hiding spot.

Darrell giggled, patting Sparko's head to calm him. "Last week, just because I thought it'd be fun. Don't worry though, I didn't look in the box." 

"You sure you don't want me to just give it to you right now?"

"No! I mean, I'm gonna say yes anyway. I really do wanna marry you, Sparko, but I still want you to actually propose to me for real, and make it a big surprise!"

Sparko sighed in relief. "Good, 'cause I got a couple of ideas for that. I just...gotta get over this first." Another sick groan escaped from somewhere within him, which he echoed vocally, and he snuggled closer. "Hey, Darrell?"

"Yeah?" The robot rubbed Sparko's back, as all his energy seemed to leave him, his lower half even flickering out and leaving him just a head and upper body on the couch.

"Tell me everything?" Darrell smiled down at him, loading as many of his memories of the wedding as he could into RAM while he tried to figure out which one to start with.

\---

"Thank you for riding, now get out!" The bus launched its entire payload right into the middle of campus, though thankfully Darrell was laughing too hard to be bothered by the rude welcome.

"It really does sound just like Ernesto!" He stumbled as he tried to get up off the ground, unable to see through tears of laughter, though thankfully Sparko caught him, keeping a tight hold on his hand.

"Remember, Babe, you're only the third villain to ever get invited to visit POINT Prep!" He kept looking around nervously as they walked, ensuring the guards noticed him before they noticed Darrell. "Just stick close to me, keep your head down, and...don't start poking around  _ too _ much into places you're not supposed to poke around in. Okay?"

"Okay…" The robot's head whipped around so fast he almost had to hold his cowboy hat on. "You know, from all your stories about this place, I'd have thought it would be bigger."

"I mean, we're kind of on a floating island, the only way you can really go is up!"

Sparko pointed out POINT's main headquarters, towering over the school as it pointed up into the clouds, and he led Darrell past the Chip Damage Memorial Megafootball Stadium, formerly the Laserblast Memorial Megafootball Stadium, though as he explained, the legendary hero's name had been scrubbed off of almost everything right after certain details of Professor Venomous' past were made public. He also explained POINT's three main disciplines, and the large buildings housing each that took up much of the campus, before they finally ducked inside the Wisdom building and made their way through the twisting halls to Sparko's classroom, where about a dozen students already waited. The entire time, Darrell's right hand didn't leave Sparko's grip, with every bit of his attention taken up by all the sights and sounds of the bustling hero academy.

"I should probably go in first and get today's class started, before you come and introduce yourself. Wait out here until I give you the signal, alright?" Sparko smiled encouragingly, ensuring his boyfriend was comfortable enough in the unfamiliar hallway, before leaving him behind. The students' loud murmuring quieted as he burst into the room, flying a lap around the large lecture hall before finally taking his spot at its front, and as he did so some large red text appeared around him, courtesy of the school's Charisma department:

SPARKO

LEVEL: 8

HIS LESSONS ARE ELECTRIFYING!!

"Yeah, yeah, they already know me…" Sparko brushed the words aside with a tired smirk, floating in front of the chalkboard.

"Now, this past week we've been going over different kinds of powers that heroes can call upon when they're in a bind -- the power of teamwork, desperation attacks, Deus Ex Machina...glorb-based powerups." Each of these were still scrawled on the chalkboard behind him, with the words "last resort" under a simple rendering of a glorb. "But today, we're gonna finish off with a personal favorite of mine, the power of love! And I even brought a very special guest to help me demonstrate that!"

Figuring that was his cue, Darrell took a single step into the room, but retreated when Sparko gave him a dirty look. Some of the students noticed, though, and the room erupted into excited chatter, which Sparko almost had to shout over.

"Now, I did mention that my boyfriend would be here, and that he's not a hero like the rest of us, so I want everyone to promise to be on their best behavior for him! Absolutely no fighting, got it?" He finally nodded to the door. "Okay, come on in, Darrell!"

"Finally!"

Darrell had hoped to make as much of a dramatic entrance as Sparko had, but settled for simply ambling in and leaning against his boyfriend's desk, letting a flash of sharp titanium teeth under the shadow cast by his large cowboy hat, and the ubiquitous red text that popped up around him, do most of the work.

LORD COWBOY DARRELL

LEVEL: -8

SPARKO'S VILLAIN FIANCÉ

"Oh, wait, no that's wrong!" Darrell pushed the words away, blushing and holding up his hands defensively. "We're not engaged  _ yet! _ We're still just boyfriends."

Laying his arm across Darrell's shoulders and leaning onto the desk next to him, Sparko snickered, along with many of his students, particularly those in the front row for some reason.

"Oh, don't worry Darrell, sometimes Charisma jumps the gun a little on those things!"

A student from the very back row of the lecture hall suddenly shouted up towards them. "Are you really a real supervillain?!"

_ "Supervillain?" _ Darrell put his hands on his hips, appalled. "I'm not a supervillain! Just, you know, a regular villain. But my dads were real supervillains before they retired, anyone here heard of Lord Boxman?"

The class stared at him in silent confusion.

"Oh. Um. Okay." His confidence drained, he nervously tapped his fingers together. "...Has anyone here heard of Professor Venomous?"

Half the class raised their hands, and Darrell sighed in relief, before regaining his enthusiasm. "Well, good! He's my stepdad!" 

Once the room finally quieted, Sparko knocked on the chalkboard a couple of times to get his students' attention once again. He quickly drew a big heart, as well as two  _ very _ rough depictions of an lightning bolt hero and a robot cowboy, above the words "The Power of Love."

"Like the power of friendship, love relies on the bond between people, and the additional strength they draw from that bond!" He altered a few equations still on the board from the earlier lesson, explaining specifically how to calculate the strength of a bond between two especially close people rather than a group. "And a factor unique to this kind of power is the absolute trust that the two have for each other, which is an expression of the time they've known each other, times how much experience they both have in combat!" He added these to the equations, making a few students' eyes, and Darrell's, glaze over as the math all got increasingly more complicated.

Noticing this, Sparko set his chalk down. "It might be easier to just show you guys this one in action, so I put together a little demonstration!" He pointed over to a coat rack standing against the wall, wrapped in a long black cloak and hood and a gray scarf, items he'd obviously pulled out of Darrell's costume collection. "Let's say this 'shadowy figure' over here is our villain, that Darrell and I need to team up in order to defeat!"

"Wait a second, Sparko, why would a villain like me be fighting another villain?" Darrell crossed his arms as he smiled knowingly at the class -- playing up their banter a little for the kids couldn't hurt, and from the giggling he got in response it seemed to be a hit.

"Uh...he said your tractor was nothin' but a hunk of junk?"

The robot shrugged, and formed his arm cannon. "Good enough for me! He's goin' down!"

Sparko dashed between Darrell and his target. "Whoa, hold up! Darrell, this guy's too powerful for us to take on with just our normal powers!"

"Aw, he is?" Darrell gave an exaggerated pout, putting his cannon away.

"Yep! But, since we're fighting him together, and we're both in love, we've got an extra edge we can use to defeat him!" Sparko winked, giving Darrell pause as a deep blush suddenly filled his artificial face, and he pulled Sparko aside to whisper to him.

"Wait, you really wanna do  _ that _ in front of a room full of kids? And  _ teenage _ kids, at that?"

"We don't have to get too into it this time, just a little!"

"And you  _ promise _ you're not gonna go overboard and pass out once it wears off this time?"

"Of course." Sparko smiled, and gently kissed Darrell, to a chorus composed half of cheering and half of jeering. All of it went ignored, though, as the robot rerouted some of his glorb's energy to his mouth, feeling Sparko swap it right out for a massive jolt of his own electricity, which easily overcharged Darrell's entire power system. His circuits burned, and his CPU briefly slowed to a crawl, but he felt Sparko's hands tighten around his upper arms, his bulging muscles more than enough reassurance to ease his glitched mind as it loaded an entirely new set of programming.

He opened his pink eye, and for only a moment stared longingly into Sparko's glowing green ones.

"Let's teach this jerk a  _ real  _ lesson, Baby!!" Sparko rocketed into the air above the robot, his body pulsing with a surplus of green-tinted electricity, and with an intense, almost sadistic look on his face, staring down that coat rack like it was a real foe. Eagerly, he held out his arms, gathering up energy for one massive discharge, but rather than let the power boost get to his head he hesitated, glancing down at Darrell to make sure he was ready as well.

Somewhere in the absolute adoration for his boyfriend that clouded the robot's mind, he could feel the extra energy surging through him, already making the pink gems on his hands glow brighter as it looked for any possible outlet. And the perfect way to unload it all, he figured, would be to follow the lead of the man he loved more than anything else -- he didn't remember who exactly that person in the black cloak was or why Sparko wanted to destroy them, but Darrell produced his arm cannon again, taking aim as it hummed far louder than usual in anticipation.

His systems threw an error: He couldn't fire as big a plasma blast as he'd charged up for, it was more than the output limit of his arm cannon!

His systems threw another error: His arm cannon suddenly didn't have a limit anymore. 

"Yee haw!!" Darrell fired, in sync with Sparko's electrical discharge, and the combined electric and plasma blast not only demolished the puny coat rack but everything behind it as well! As Sparko's students looked on in awe, so did the Strength class in the next building over, as both now had gaping holes in the walls between them.

"Oh, uh...whoops!" He hovered just above Darrell's shoulder, already feeling a little lightheaded as the extra glorb energy started to wear off, and grabbed onto his arm to steady himself. Darrell smiled, revelling in his beloved's touch, but an alarm he'd set to go off inside him before he'd glitched went off, and he automatically forced a refresh of his hivemind, returning to full functionality whether he liked it or not.

Elodie, who had apparently chosen that day to sit in on the Strength lesson, appeared on her side of the damaged walls, with an expression that was equal parts seething rage and utter disbelief. "Again?! And  _ both _ walls this time?!" She crossed her arms. "Do your demonstrations really have to go this far, Sparko?"

"Hey, I wasn't an honors student for nothing!" The rebuttal made Elodie groan, but Sparko just shrugged. "Don't worry, we'll go back to advanced calculus next week," he assured his commander, to the class' disappointment, as the green hue finally worked its way out of his body and he came down from his glorb-charged state for good.

"Don't wowwy Miss Ewodie, I got it!" One of the Strength students, a teenage cyborg, wasted no time in hanging a couple of temporary coverings over both walls, flying between the buildings using jets in his feet. There wasn't much to the lesson beyond that demonstration, with the bell ringing only a few minutes afterward. Sparko chose to teach the rest of his class from his desk, still a little woozy from overloading himself, and allowed Darrell to doodle a little on the board behind him as he spoke.

"Well, I guess that's it for this week! Remember that this is all gonna be on the next exam!"

Even though the bell had rung, and their next classes were waiting, all of the students stayed behind, loudly whispering and giggling amongst themselves. Darrell leaned in close to his boyfriend, concern in his voice. "Psst, Sparko, I thought you said class was over? What's going on?"

He just looked out at his students, holding back his own laughter. "Okay, you all win the bet, no homework over the weekend! Now, who wants to do the honors?" A single brave pupil in the front row stood, catching Darrell's attention as she raised her hand. Slowly, she lowered it a little, pointing to her ring finger, to the robot's increasing confusion.

"Uh...what does that mean?" He examined his own hands, starting with the left, and finding nothing out of the ordinary switched to his right, where there was nothing on any of his fingers except-

He gasped, as he finally saw the ring, with a decently-sized yellow gem that matched the ones in the robot's construction, and a glassy band that shone bright yellow as well.

"Heh, I had it made out of a mood ring, from one of those toy capsule machines you like! The little slip of paper that came with it said it'll turn blue when you're thinkin' about romance!" Sparko glanced up at the ring, confused. "I don't think it said what yellow was supposed to be, though…"

"S-Sparko? How long have I been wearing this?!" 

"I slipped it on when we got off the bus," he explained, snickering. "I knew you wouldn't feel it, and you'd be too busy checkin' out POINT Prep to see it right away, so I was waitin' to see if you'd notice before the end of class!"

Sparko got up from his chair, only to grab onto Darrell's hands as he still wobbled a little in midair. "Darrell...Cob, I had this whole speech planned, about how you made me the happiest man in the Neutral Zone, but I...I think I’m too worn out to even say it all. But, will you marry me anyway? You know, just for funsies?"

Darrell couldn't help but laugh at his boyfriend's shortened proposal, but smiled. "You already know I'm gonna say yes!"

"I know, but I kinda had to ask..."

Darrell pulled Sparko up, and gently kissed him. "I'm glad you finally did. This was the best surprise ever!" The red text came up again, still reading "SPARKO'S VILLAIN FIANCÉ," and this time Darrell didn't protest.

The students all excitedly filed out of the classroom, leaving the two alone, Darrell admiring and playing a little with his new engagement ring and Sparko resting against his shoulder.

"So, you like it?" 

Darrell nodded, slipping the thing on and off, trying it on different fingers, and watching the band change color. "I love it! But, I can't get it to turn blue…"

"I guess maybe the colors'll be different for you, since your hands are made of metal…" Sparko giggled, as Darrell let him try it on as well; the instant the ring touched his skin it turned a deep blue, as the pigment inside reacted to his body heat. "We might have to throw that paper out and experiment a little!"

"I'd like that," he replied, taking his ring back and letting it change to yellow once again. "Let's hurry and get home so we can play with it some more, and start planning the wedding too!"

Sparko stopped him, pointing up at the clock. "Darrell, I hate to break it to you, but we still got two more classes to get through today." Darrell whined a little, not looking forward to having to glitch himself yet again, so Sparko tried to reassure him as he led him outside. "We can at least do a little planning in the cafetorium first, though. Right after you help me break into that old PA system and make an extra special announcement to the whole school..."

Along the way, though, there was one question Darrell just couldn't wait to ask. "Hey, Sparko, you're taking my name, right? I mean, 'Sparko Boxman' sounds way better than 'Darrell...nothing at all.'"

He paused. "Uh...we'll talk about that."

\---

It took every last bit of Sparko Boxman's strength, but he was able to carry Darrell past the threshold into the farmhouse, bridal-style. But, unfortunately, that was about all he could do -- once inside he hurriedly set the heavy robot back down onto his feet and leaned against the wall, panting and barely keeping afloat, giving Darrell a second to smooth out his dress.

"See?" Sparko said weakly, "I told you I could do it! All those months of weight training paid off!"

Darrell just smiled, and planted one final kiss on his cheek. "Well, you didn't get me to the bedroom, but I'm still proud of you, 'Dear'!"

As he recovered, Sparko looked up at his new husband. Darrell had insisted on sewing his wedding dress completely by himself, over the course of several weeks of travelling back and forth to Boxmore to work on it and keeping the final product a surprise, and all the effort had been more than worth it. The dress and matching veil were big and bulky -- neither of them had realized beforehand that fabric stores could  _ run out _ of fabric -- and the whole thing was covered in rhinestones and glitter to make it sparkle, and in it Darrell was...stunning, even with the plain, open-toed sandals and brightly-colored nail polish (courtesy of Sparko) that completed the look.

"Shoot, I think that POINT dress uniform you were gonna wear is still back at Boxmore," Darrell finally remembered, dreamily staring at his husband as well -- a simple pink tux had proven to be a better choice for a room half-filled with villains in the end. Though, he had never been more glad to see Sparko ditch the gloves, goggles, and even helmet just for him, especially when Darrell was allowed to do his hair just the way he liked it.

Drifting over to the couch, Sparko patted the spot next to him, inviting Darrell to sit, which he did so happily. "That's okay, I don't think I'll need it for a couple weeks!" Pulling his husband a little closer, Sparko tried to wrap his electric half around Darrell's legs, though the layers of fabric between them made it difficult. "It's not that I don't love the dress, Baby, but don't you think it's about time I got you out of it?" 

Darrell only laughed, after a few of the gears in his head had time to turn and he understood exactly what Sparko meant. "You know, technically our honeymoon isn't gonna start until tomorrow, when we get out to the beach!" He still pulled Sparko onto his lap and kissed him anyway, with the hero powerless to hide his delight at the gesture, but before things could get too heated between them Darrell flopped over and forced Sparko to lay on his chest for a few moments to cool down.

"Darrell, there's no shame in startin' a little early…"

Carefully, Darrell crawled out from under him, and stood. "I know, but we can do  _ that _ whenever we want. I had something special in mind for our wedding night though, wait right here, okay?" A rather offended Sparko watched him dash into their bedroom for a few minutes, trading his dress for a large rolled-up blueprint. 

"What's this?" Darrell held the thing out for him to take, and he slowly unrolled it atop the nearby coffee table. "...No, seriously, what am I lookin' at exactly?"

Darrell giggled. "Well, obviously it's a robot blueprint. I've had it ready to go for a while now."

"W-Wait. Is this robot who I think it's gonna be?" Sparko looked up at him, shocked. "Darrell, we're takin' off on our honeymoon first thing tomorrow morning! We can't just...build our first kid tonight!"

"We don't have to finish her though! I just thought, you know, we could get started, and I could show you a few things about engineering. And then we can go on our honeymoon, have a really good time, come back and work on her some more!"

Sparko stared down at the blueprint, trying to make sense of all the gears and wires and the mechanics they fit into. "So it's a 'her,' huh? She...looks a lot like me."

"She's gonna be more like me on the inside, so I thought it'd only be fair…" The robot excitedly pointed out parts of his design. "I got a few tips on the electric half from your parents' notes on how they made you. She won't short out if she gets splashed, though, I made sure of that!"

"So you really wanna do this tonight? Instead of...you know?" He motioned towards the bedroom again, but at Darrell's adamant expression he sighed. "I guess I'm just not gettin' out of that five kids thing with you, am I?"

"Well, I've been thinking about that, too…" Darrell's eye drifted down the hall to the other bedrooms, additions which he and Sparko had added to the old farmhouse together. "We've already got Robbie, and Sara, and Teagan, and Gaston, staying with us every other weekend. So...technically I only need one more kid to have my five, and this was the design I liked the most. And I'll let you make the call on when we build any more, so that you're ready for it."

"...Thanks, Darrell. I guess we'd better get started, then, you got a lot to catch me up on when it comes to buildin' robots!"

“Hey, you’ll learn whether you like it or not, you’re part of the family now!”

Darrell held up his arms, while Sparko looked down at him, confused.

"Carry me again?"

"Um...no?" He was still sore from carrying all 500-or-so pounds of Darrell into the house!

"Oh well, it was worth a shot." Shrugging, Darrell changed the way he held out his arms, letting Sparko sink comfortably into them instead, and he carried his husband away to start their work.


End file.
